Rebatching shaving soap

[traderbren]

Forgive me if it's obvious. I'm only on my first cup of coffee and was up late with a sick child last night.

I have a few small pucks of shaving soap from 2 or 3 months ago. If I wanted to rebatch them to add bentonite and hopefully alter the fragrance a bit, is the process for rebatching still the same as for an all NaOH soap? I use KOH and NaOH in my shaving soap. Can I just grate them all down (as much as they'll grate- they are soft), add a tiny bit of liquid and melt them again?

Thanks for your help!

 

[IrishLass]

Yep, you can do that. You probably might not even need to add very much liquid at all if your soap is soft enough. Use a spray bottle to spritz the soap periodically as it is melting so that you don't overdo it. For what it's worth, I've melted down one of my shave croaps before in the oven and it went wonderfully with just a few spritzes of water every now and then as it was heating. My croap was made with 64% KOH and 34% NaOH.

Edited to add that I didn't even grate mine. It was just one croap puck, and I placed it in an oven-safe bowl to melt 'as is'.

IrishLass

 

[traderbren]

Irish Lass, thank you! I actually used your percentages when I make mine, so this is super helpful, lol!

 

[cgsample]

Here's an oddity. Last month I could not get a batch fluid enough to add a FO, so after many hours of cooking, I said screw it and put it into a PVC pipe.

Now, a month later, I decide to re-batch. I push it out of the tube and try to chop it up because it was too soft to grate. It was like chopping cold butter, pieces sticking together, so I try to freeze it. After about two hours in the freezer, the cold butter consistency turned into a soft pudding consistency? Much firmer at room temperature?

 

[IrishLass]

Wow, CG- that's really bizarre!


IrishLass