Rebatching woes

The recipe:
900 grams pure deer tallow at 125F/52C
100 grams canola oil, 125F/52C
150 grams of Red Crown brand lye in 1 cup distilled water also 125F/52C

I had trace at 19 minutes, poured into a plastic tub where it cured for 24 hours before I cut into blocks. Hard blocks, and they didn't exactly cut along the lines I had scored with the knife. After another 2 weeks of curing as blocks, I ran it all thru a food processor into "potato chips" of soap. It cured another two weeks like this, because I was argueing with myself over fragrance choice. Ultimately, opting for no fragrance.

Finally, I put the soap chips into a large double boiler along with a quarter cup of water in order to rebatch and pour into molds I had ordered.

I could not get it to a thick liquid again to save my soul! I tried adding a quarter cup of water at a time until I had almost 3 cups of added water. It foamed and volcanoed, but no amount of work would get it to a moldable fluidity. Ultimately, I dumped it into three plastic tubs and tried to smoosh it down to get out as much air as possible. Now it is a crumby mess. Works like a charm at getting my hands clean, and I even did a batch of clothes in the washing machine with it and had excellent results.

Please explain in simple terms to a first time soaper why I failed to "rebatch".

It will never become "thick liquid". At least as far as my rebatching experience goes.
It will only go through thick vaseline stage within 30 minutes or so and that's were it is cooked and ready for mold. And that's without adding any water. That method always worked for me.
I don't know how will you fix it with all that added water to be honest. I think you kind of made liquid soap there.
Maybe someone with more experience will help.

Deer tallow make a really, really hard soap and the harder the soap, the longer it can take to cook the rebatch into a usable state. I've had to cook rebatch for up to 3 hours on low to get it to a workable state and it still had chunks of soap in it.
Is your soap still pretty wet? I would put it back in the crock pot on low and let it cook longer. Now that its sat for awhile being wet, it might cook down quicker.
In the future, when working with soap made from a large amount of animal fat, try to cut it as soon as possible to prevent crumbling edges. I wouldn't rebatch either unless there is a problem that needs to be fixed. Its so much easier to add scent/color to CP then mess with rebatch.

Can I ask why you rebatched? Why not just add the scent to the soap before you poured it, or just make it hot process to start off with?

fuzz-juzz said:

I don't know how will you fix it with all that added water to be honest. I think you kind of made liquid soap there.

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It is solid! But of the structure of rice krispy bars! I would not hesitate to estimate it is 40% air. Swiss cheese soap!

Obsidian: I held it in the oven at 170F for 2 1/2 hours, but thicker than vaseline was the best I got out of the deal.

And, lastly, to The Efficacious Gentleman: I rebatched because in anticipation of adding fragrance (that I did not have at the time of making the batch, my first ever) I had run it all thru a food processor, making it into shavings. I was hoping to pour it into my bar molds, as well.

Ok, looks like this will be the batch I use around the house. That just means I need to make another batch that I can haul to historical re-enactments and Rendezvous to use as "trade goods".

Part of my interest in home made soaps, other than the historical interests I have, is to use the soap for body and laundry. Being utterly free of dies, perfumes, UV enhancers, etc, it is perfect soap for being scent free in the woods. Deer also have fairly good eyesight in the UV spectrum and clothes washed in Tide look like something you would see hanging on a wall in the back of a head shop!

Thanks folks.

But why not just wait until you have the scent there and then make the soap? I know some people suggest making cp with no scent to then rebatch with a scent, but unless you're making huge batches of unscented and then rebatching a little bit at a time, I have never heard a reasonable explanation for doing it

The Efficacious Gentleman said:

But why not just wait until you have the scent there and then make the soap? I know some people suggest making cp with no scent to then rebatch with a scent, but unless you're making huge batches of unscented and then rebatching a little bit at a time, I have never heard a reasonable explanation for doing it

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I have never had much success at adding fragerance to CP soap. The scent is almost non existant. However if I rebatch it the next morning it melts fine and the sent is still there when it sets.

Then why not just do it as a hp batch then and there, rather than cp and rebatch?

Hp is certainly easier to do in a crock pot than trying to rebatch. You can usually use less fo with hp.

It doesn't exactly relate to your questions, but I was looking at the recipe and a little alarm bell rang when I compared the lye at 150 g with the total fat weight. For 100 g canola and 900 g deer tallow, you would be wanting to use more like 130 g NaOH at zero lye discount. At a more typical 5% lye discount, you'd only need 123 g of NaOH. Your recipe has more like a -20% lye discount and I'd say that's one of the reasons why your original soap is so brittle.

Always, ALWAYS run every recipe through a soap recipe calculator before using it. Never assume the recipe is right -- make sure! A a given soap might have been thoroughly tested and the recipe carefully checked for typos, but even the most conscientious soaper will sometimes make a mistake when writing out a recipe. And there are a lot of less conscientious soapers out there who are blindly passing recipes around without checking the numbers.

The one cup of water (approx 236 g) you used when mixed with that much lye makes for a 40% lye solution concentration. This is certainly do-able from a chemistry standpoint so it's certainly your call if you want to go there, but it's playing on the edge for most soapers and most soap recipes. Most beginning soapers (I'm assuming you're new to soaping since you're measuring your water by volume) might have a little more control and encounter fewer surprises by using a less concentrated lye solution more like 28% to 32%. The low water content will also contribute to the overall hardness of the soap.

Just to update this thread, I cut/broke the batch into usable sized blocks and left them to cure further. About three weeks ago I picked a small and odd shaped block and headed for the shower. Decent lather, not what I would call slimey, as some people have described deer tallow soap. And it rinsed off nicely. I continued using the block and it is longlasting and quite good at getting the grime off me knucks! I have shaved with it, washed my face with it, showered with it, and even used it for cleaning up falcon poop. Whatever woes I had in rebatching cannot be used to ding this soap on effective cleaning!

I pawned off a number of cakes on friends that came out to the Black Hills for turkey hunting camp and we used it exclusively for washing up (with the notable exception of dishes, as it leaves a soap ring in the sink and I imagine that also goes for the dishes). Everyone was pleased with how it did not dry their hands and was certainly not what they expected from LYE soap.

I am going to repeat the recipe, with adjustments as a lye calculator would suggest. The recipe was taken verbatim from a 4 pt Youtube video that covered a lot of ground in the very most basic steps and explanations of how soap making works. The video was the most complete, explicit, and descriptive of the process, thus it was chosen as my entrée into soaping.

Ok, here is what the calculator tells me:
900g deer tallow
100g olive oil
133.472g 3% lye
330g water

No deep understanding of superfatting, so I read up a little on it and randomly chose 3% superfatting. Good? Bad? Pure genius?

And the other day I was cleaning out the spice rack and noticed the date on my rubbed sage. I buy replacements and throw out anything over 18 months, and this is time to age it out of the rack and be replaced. But it still is good, albeit not fully fresh and full strength. Thinking of adding these last 2 tbsp. to the batch for a hint of culinary sage aroma.

Your thoughts?

-DirtyKnuckles (albeit less dirty now!)

That looks like a very useful soap recipe 3% SF is probably about right where you're more interested in cleaning then conditioning and moisturizing.

Unfortunately I have yet to see dried herbs add to the scent when mixed into the batter. They just end up as brown bits in the soap. If you're determined to use them try them sprinkled whole on top (where they will still go brown but *might* retain some scent) or finely ground and sieved and made into a pencil line (where it doesn't matter if they go brown and you might get lucky and some tiny scent lingers).