Color side of my soap did not harden

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CPADRIAN

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Hey guys I have a recipe that I usually use its my main basic recipe cures and is rock hard in 4 weeks every time. I tried something new this time I colored about 4 oz of olive oil green with parsley . Once I got to trace on my recipe I added the green olive oil to it and kept blending for about 10 mins until it got a good trace. It's been about 3 weeks and the green side of the soap is still really soft the rest of the soap with no colorant just essential oils is rock hard and even with a lot of pressure I can't depress it the green side however is basically mushy . What can I do ? Is it possible to re-batch ? Thanks everyone
 
4oz sounds like a lot of oil, especially if your batch size was small. The experts here are going to ask you for your recipe and batch size, so I would post thata s soon as you can.
 
You should still post your recipe so they can tell you whether or not you can and how to do it. There are folks here with a lot of experience and knowledge, but you need to give them a little more information.
 
or put the 1/2 amount of the recipe through soap calc with the added oil and see what happens. An extra tablespoon of water in coloured sections can lead to permanently soft soap.

I've confetti-ed all sorts of defective soap (including soft) and it works well. If that's what you mean by rebatching. If it can't be grated cut it off and throw it away and confetti the rest.

Next time use your coloured oil as part of the oil required for the recipe.
 
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I assume this extra oil was not from your batch? If not re-run your original recipe through soapcalc or which calculator you use and just add in the 4 oz olive oil. Leave all the other numbers the same. Now subtract the the amount of lye from your original formula from your new formula with includes the extra 4 oz. You cannot just add in several oz of oils to a batch and have it turn out correct, which is why people pull out oil from their batch for mixing colorants. I on the other hand use glycerin for all colorants because I do not always know how much color I am going to use. This is the procedure I would use to rebatch it.

Or as Penelopejane mentioned cut off the soft part and grate the remainder for confetti. You could also let the soft part cure another month or so and confetti it into a lower superfat batch of soap. Around 3% superfat and you will have a lovely soap
 
I did account for the color oil I subtracted the oil from myOriginal recipe

>Once I got to trace on my recipe I added the green olive oil to it and kept blending for about 10 mins until it got a good trace.<

It is really easy to muck up when you have two sections of mix that you are playing with for one soap. Did you subtract the 4oz of oil only from the coloured section or did you subtract it equally from both sections?
If you added 4 oz of coloured oil to the coloured section did you also add 4 oz of plain oil to the plain section?

So if your whole recipe calls for 20oz of oil.
Mix total recipe less 8 oz of OO =12oz of oil then divide it into two equal parts.
Into the plain section add 4 oz OO
Into the coloured section add 4oz Parsley OO.

Or mix two lots of recipe. One 10oz of the mix and one 6 oz of the mix. Add 4 oz of coloured OO to only the small mix.

Or do you think there is no extra oil in the coloured section at all?

It seems strange that you took the oils to trace in the coloured section and then added more oil and took it further to trace?

Did you do that for both sections?
 
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I ground it up super fine and strained it only once but You could still see fine parsley powder in it


Was there still parsley in the colored olive oil? I mean bits of parsley. Or did you double or triple strain it to get all the particles out before you used it?
 
It sounds like too much botanicals in the colored portion. Depending on the ratio of powder to oil, it may harden in time. I'd put a fan on the soaps and check them weekly. I have left 'too wet' soap to dry and it did eventually, but it shriveled and looked pretty ugly. So if yours looks like its going to start to shrivel, I'd just re-batch that portion of the soap. If you cut of the soft portion as suggested previously you would still have nice guest sized bars (assuming your bars are bath size bars to start with).
 
I subtracted it from the total amount of olive oil that my recipe asks for. Should I just cut the green out of the bar and put it back in my mould , do another batch and re pour into side that I cut out so I can have a solid whole brick again. Really not sure what to do with the green part or if I can salvage it
 
The green part could be used again in confetti soap it. In truth, it may have been the extra water from the parsley that made the green part soft. You might want to just wait a while long and see if your soap will completely harden. It's not the end of the world and these things happen. It would probably be better if you look into natural colorants in the future and by that, I mean powders. Powders don't have the extra water in them so you shouldn't get surprises like this in your soap.
 
Unless you are determined that this batch go to someone for a gift, I would wait. Give it a few weeks to re-evaluate for hardness. If it is a gift, I would do an entirely new batch, then watch the old one.
 
If you took 4 ounces of oils from the entire batch, but then added the whole 4 ounces back to just half the batch, then that part probably has a huge SF and soap can be very very soft if you have a massive SF. If you posted your recipe and batch size, we could help you figure it out but it seems like you are reluctant to do that.

SO I would do what a couple other people recommended. Figure out what the SF is for the half of the soap you added the oil to. If it's fairly reasonable, you can wait it out. If it's HUGE, then you could grate the entire batch up (both sides) and rebatch it together without having to add anything else. If you decide to cut off the green part and rebatch that, then you would need to calculate how much lye to add to get the SF into the range you like.

I wouldn't cut the green part up, put it in a mold and pour new batter over it. It doesn't solve the softness issue of the green soap.
 
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"...If you took 4 ounces of oils from the entire batch, but then added the whole 4 ounces back to just half the batch, then that part probably has a huge SF..."

And the plain part may well be lye heavy!
 
I meant to mention that but then forgot. A small negative SF can end up okay but a big one would not. It's hard to say how big the deficit/excess may be as the OP hasn't said what the batch size was.
 
It looks like the green side is starting to harden up . I did tongue taste on both sides and I didn't get anything to indicate it's lye heavy I'm just going to keep waiting it out . Thanks again everyone
 
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