Salt bar rebatch question

[Moose Wrangler]

Hi! I read quite a bit about salt bars and thought I would give it a go, easy enough. Everyone mentioned how quickly they set so being proactive I wanted to make sure I added the salt earlier than later.

Neat.

Except, I added it way too early and the salt ended up mostly collecting at the bottom of the bar instead of being suspended throughout. Doh.

I've read through some other salt bar rebatch threads and I'm left with one (or two) question. Doesn't grating the bar down cause issues with cutting up the salt? Won't this be exacerbated if the salt is mostly concentrated on the bottom of the bar?

The common theme when I was looking into making salt bars was to get a fine salt because you can't grind it without causing issues. Will grating the soap that needs to be rebatched cause issues?

 

[penelopejane]

I don't think you can rebatch with heat a salt soap as it will just dissolve and become a brine bar.

Grating it would work I guess but I've never done it. A grater isn't going to cut (or grind) the salt in the salt bar. It might be tough to grate the salt soap though. It sets up mighty hard. I'd probably only grate the bottom (mostly salt) part and discard the top (mostly non-salt) part

Might make a nice texture with the confetti and the new soap. Are you going to add it to a new salt bar batch? You won't have heaps of time to incorporate the confetti and the new salt.

 

[Lin19687]

If it is still on the softer side you could have grated it and maybe made it work in a rebatch.

But if you are melting it down (only that soap) I have yet to make it work out nicely

 

[shunt2011]

Re-batching salt soaps is more difficult as the salt is likely to dissolve. I would grate it and add it to another batch personally. As PJ said make it confetti soap.

 

[amd]

I had that happen with a batch... I tossed them.

 

[cmzaha]

You can and I have rebatched salt bars but it is easier to grate them and use them with a new batch of soap adding in more salt if you want more. I normally use 100% salt and even add in my full salt amount when adding in my shredded salt bar. When I shred up salt bars I just keep it in a zip lock because I never add in all the shreds to a new batch resulting in leftover shred. The salt bar will grate down quite fine and does not seem to sharpen the salt when done this way

 

[Moose Wrangler]

Awesome, thanks everyone! I'll grate the bars as much as possible and plan on adding them to another soap like confetti. Thankfully it was a super small batch which should make for a quicker repurposing.

 

[Moose Wrangler]

Alright! I'm finally getting around to dealing with my failure of salt bars! Instead of confetti I decided that I'm just going to try to mix it into the batter of another salt bar. I put enough salt in the first batch that I don't plan to add any more salt.

I want to keep the batch size small because these were supposed to be testers. I currently have one pound of soap gratings (approximately). Can I mix them into a half pound new batch or would I need to have a larger amount of new soap compared to the gratings?

E.G. 2 to 1 ratio for new to old soap?

I'm currently aiming for a 1:2 ratio of it's feasible.

 

[Obsidian]

2:1 new to old will work well. I've done roughly 50/50 and it was quite thick, made it difficult to work with.

 

[penelopejane]

Alright! I'm finally getting around to dealing with my failure of salt bars! Instead of confetti I decided that I'm just going to try to mix it into the batter of another salt bar. I put enough salt in the first batch that I don't plan to add any more salt.

I want to keep the batch size small because these were supposed to be testers. I currently have one pound of soap gratings (approximately). Can I mix them into a half pound new batch or would I need to have a larger amount of new soap compared to the gratings?

E.G. 2 to 1 ratio for new to old soap?

I'm currently aiming for a 1:2 ratio of it's feasible.

I'm a bit confused. What you are going to do is confetti soap!

 

[Moose Wrangler]

I'm a bit confused. What you are going to do is confetti soap!

I suppose it technically is but I don't think it'll look like a traditional confetti soap which was a change from my initial plan.

 

[earlene]

If it is not the look you are after, but to decrease the concentration of salt, how much new soap to use would depend on how much you want to reduce the concentration of salt in the resulting soap.

If you want to correct the problem of the salt not being fulling distributed throughout the old soap (concentrated on the bottoms of the bars, you mentioned), then I'd go for a batch size that is twice as large as what you will be adding. So if you have 500 grams of old soap grated, use a 1000 gram batch of new soap. But make sure to get the soap to at least medium trace before you start incorporating the grated soap. If you add it too soon, you could end up with it sinking to the bottom again like in the old soap. Then mix it up really well before you pour it into the mold.

 

[Moose Wrangler]

Earlene, thanks! That's my plan for tomorrow- double the original batch size and not be overly concerned about getting everything mixed early (unlike last time).

 

[Obsidian]

Have you grated your soap yet? After you do, let it dry for a hour or two then rub it between your palms. You will get a powder or at least small crumbs that way.

 

[Lin19687]

How are you grating the old Salt bars.... I may need to do this too on some end pieces

 

[Obsidian]

I use a cheese grater, the large holes.

 

[OldHippie]

There is a limit to how much salt will dissolve. Brine can only hold 26%-28% salt by weight.

 

[earlene]

There is a limit to how much salt will dissolve. Brine can only hold 26%-28% salt by weight.

I don't think he was planning a soleseife (brine) bar, but simply to rebatch his salt bar into new soap.

 

[cmzaha]

I use a salad shooter if I grind down salt bars to confetti them in new soap. If I do this, I make another batch of salt soap just using less than my 100% salt

 

[OldHippie]

There is a limit to how much salt will dissolve. Brine can only hold 26%-28% salt by weight.

I don't think he was planning a soleseife (brine) bar, but simply to rebatch his salt bar into new soap.

Yeah, I know. My post above was an indirect response to the following:

I don't think you can rebatch with heat a salt soap as it will just dissolve and become a brine bar.

Re-batching salt soaps is more difficult as the salt is likely to dissolve