Awesome! How'd the rebatch turn out?
Ummm, I learned that you could burn soap
It was very effort intensive, and I was not prepared for the gloopy consistency. I suspect I added too much liquid in the endstill in the mould and I'll see how that goes tomorrow.
It does smell lovely though, and I did get to play with some colourants.
Awesome! How'd the rebatch turn out?
I just cut my rebatch handmill effort, so will report here and seek thoughts.
It started out as my first-ever soap effort, a 70% olive 25% coconut oil CP with some other oils and a little (?2% superfatting). I used no colours and rosewater as a scent. I did not know that rosewater was not great for soap scenting, and my batch turned out a slightly greeninsh yellow and smelling only of olive oil. That smell faded over the following week but I decided to use it to try handmilling, and dabble with other scents and with micas.
I grated the batch, saving two bars to see how they progress with curing time, and left it until last weekend. I made up four batches of scent / colour: 1. peach and some titanium oxide; 2. peach and orange-peach colour; 3. peach and pink-peach colour; and 4. coconut/vanilla and titanium. I used peach kernel oil for the frangrance/colour batches.
I used milk as my main liquid and an oven-based method for rebatching.
It would not melt at all nicely and I added more liquid. I also increased the temperature (140C) and managed to caramelise some of it. Finally I got it to a semiliquid (gelatinous yellow petroleum jelly) consistency and divided it 80%/20% popping the 20% back into the oven to keep pliable. I mixed #1 scent colour throughout, and then sort of swirled #2 and #3 roughly through the mix. I then spooned it, quite messily, into my homemade wooden mould and bonked it on the bench a little to try and smooth out the larger mountains. With the 20% I added the colour/dye and spooned-smoothed it as a layer on top of the main peach mix.
The next day the mixture in the mould still felt semiliquid. I left it for another couple of days, and it was still very soft so I popped it (mould and all) into the fridge. After two days there, this morning, it felt soft but firm so I removed the paper-clad block from the mould, inspected, and cut.
It had a very 'moist' oily exterior surface and there was obvious colour mica swirled over the surface. The mica was loose and transferred onto my fingers when I touched the soap. The block cut easily, still relatively soft, but some small white blobules dragged as the knife cut through the block. I assume they were little collections of the titanium oxide colourant.
It does smell great and the colours are a base of pale cream-brown with the pink and orange forming swirl patterns, there is nothing to suggest white / cream colours yet.
Anyways, here's a couple of photos. I suspect, subject to your advice, that:
1. I used way too much liquid in my rebatching effort;
2. I impatiently burnt part of the mix;
3. Perhaps I mixed the micas in an inappropriate carrier (oil);
4. Perhaps I should have mixed the orange and pink mica liquids into a small aliquot of soap before adding it to the main batter ... maybe that would have 'embedded' the colour better into the mix;
5. Perhaps I used way too little titanium oxide ... but I guess that part may lighten over time.
First image is the uncut block, and the second is some of the cut bars (about 20% of the entire batch).
