Soft Soap rebatched to salt bars?

[BubblingBrooke]

So I tried a new recipe and it just didn't pan out. I don't know if I miscalculated somewhere, my FO was a very well behaved one and I had 62% hard oils and butters, 3% SF (which I don't usually do) - I added coconut milk to my oils (which I've been doing with great success). I don't know, but both batches I made on the first of April went wonky on me - weather or air pressure maybe?!? The recipe really wasn't far of from my usual, just a couple of adjustments due to being out of castor oil - everything was super well checked in soap calc and should have produced a hard bar. Bad scale batteries perhaps? Anyhow - these babies just won't firm up. They were able to come out of the freezer paper lined pvc mold (not the unlined one though, I've gotta scoop it out). Some areas have little bits of free floating oils - I do disperse my TD and micas in oil, so I hazard to guess it's just too much oil. I was able to cut but they're slightly firmer than room temp butter. I'm wanting to just rebatch them and add shreds to help firm it up, but then I wondered if it's possible to add salt and turn them into salt bars? I've only found one other forum discussing this and there wasn't a whole lot of varying input.

How would one go about doing this? I was going to throw it in the crockpot with 50% salt then mold it - but I'd rather not waste anything if it won't work. In hesitant about adding extra liquid - A little guidance please?

 

[BubblingBrooke]

Just for clarification, it didn't rice - that's just where little pockets of oil seemed to have formed. I noticed it's worst around the white, so I'm leaning towards too much oil from TD oil dispersion.

 

[Kcryss]

Well, as someone that just had a batch of HP salt bars fail, I would say "no, no, no, don't do it"!
Unless you move very very fast, HP and Salt Bars do not mix! I'm too slow ... now nothing but crumbles.
Since HP and salt bars do not mix, rebatching would be the same thing imho anyway.

 

[BubblingBrooke]

Well, as someone that just had a batch of HP salt bars fail, I would say "no, no, no, don't do it"!
Unless you move very very fast, HP and Salt Bars do not mix! I'm too slow ... now nothing but crumbles.
Since HP and salt bars do not mix, rebatching would be the same thing imho anyway.

Ok, so work rebatch with soap shreds firm these up?

 

[ResolvableOwl]

How would one go about doing this? I was going to throw it in the crockpot with 50% salt then mold it - but I'd rather not waste anything if it won't work. In hesitant about adding extra liquid - A little guidance please?

I'll try to make it up in the different ways I could read this:

• If the soap dough is still that soft, you could just knead in the salt (without heating), bring them in shape (individual shapes will save you from cutting later on). But…
• …you might not need the salt. If you were for whatever reason just a bit too high in water, evaporation will harden up your bar(s). In particular when you say that your recipe contains enough hard oils.
• Or, do a usual rebatch (heat up with a bit of water), but without salt.
• Or, you can try good ol' salting-out (when you're pretty sure that saponification has finished): cooking up with water similar to rebatch, but then adding enough salt to deliberately curdle the soap solution into a more-or-less pure soap layer, and glycerol/salt brine holding most of the water. That's what supposedly happened to @Kcryss , just not on purpose.
• What about “emergency CPOP” (putting it into the oven, heated up somewhere in between CP and HP, and let stand overnight)?

 

[BubblingBrooke]

I'll try to make it up in the different ways I could read this:

• If the soap dough is still that soft, you could just knead in the salt (without heating), bring them in shape (individual shapes will save you from cutting later on). But…
• …you might not need the salt. If you were for whatever reason just a bit too high in water, evaporation will harden up your bar(s). In particular when you say that your recipe contains enough hard oils.
• Or, do a usual rebatch (heat up with a bit of water), but without salt.
• Or, you can try good ol' salting-out (when you're pretty sure that saponification has finished): cooking up with water similar to rebatch, but then adding enough salt to deliberately curdle the soap solution into a more-or-less pure soap layer, and glycerol/salt brine holding most of the water. That's what supposedly happened to @Kcryss , just not on purpose.
• What about “emergency CPOP” (putting it into the oven, heated up somewhere in between CP and HP, and let stand overnight)?

I will look into an emergency CPOP, along with letting them sit out another week or two. It wasn't intended to be soap dough, it's too soft for that even - I considered rebatch as my design didn't even turn out as hoped and the colors are not offensive when blended - I just wondered if I could make them salt bars and have them firm up. I may just stick to rebatch with shreds though. I'll experiment with the little bit that had to be scooped and leave the bars that I liked out a little longer.