CP soap too brittle to cut into bars and won't mill for rebatch

[Tomahawk]

Hi,
I made my second batch of CP soap a few days ago. The first batch I made, I didn't incubate and it took way too long to dry out enough to mill it for rebatch soap. This second batch I did I incubated for maybe 16 hrs? When I popped it out of the mould and tried to cut it into bars it shattered. I tried milling it to see if it i could melt it, it was so hard I had to chop it really fine. Then I tried remelting it with water and that didn't work. It stayed in chunks.
Here's the question, what the eff did I do wrong to make the soap so hard the second time? Incubate too long? Too much lye?

 

[MrsSpaceship]

What was your recipe?

 

[DeeAnna]

"...Here's the question, what the eff did I do wrong to make the soap so hard the second time? Incubate too long? Too much lye?..."

You didn't give enough information for me to even guess. Please post the full recipe of all ingredients with weights, not just percents. Describe the process better of how you made the soap. Also, what do you mean by "incubate" -- explain please!

Also if you try to remelt large pieces of soap, even normal soap, it can take a long time. Most people grate or shred the soap into small pieces.

 

[Dahila]

Excess lye will do it, overheating will do it...............as DeeAnna said give some more info, please

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

Also please explain what you are aiming to do generally - it sounds like you're making soap to instantly 'rebatch' it - why do you want to do this? We might be able to save you a step or ten

 

[IrishLass]

Ditto all the above. We can't help troubleshoot if we don't know what actually went into the soap and the amounts in weight of each. I will say one thing, though- soap that's only 16 hours old and so hard that it shatters upon cutting it pretty typical of an extremely lye-heavy batch, but without knowing all the details, I can't say that I'm 100% sure that that's the problem.

How are you formulating your recipes, and are you using a lye calculator to obtain the proper amount of lye to use for them? And how are you measuring your ingredients, i,e, via volume or weight?


IrishLass