Ooh that's good to know! How much would you recommend? I don't have another spray bottle so I'll have to wet it with my hands
I tried my wire cutter on a 6 month old rebatch bar I have and t cut trough fine, if I have issues I always have a bench scraper
I did the rebatch layer a few days back so I could always do the CP layer tomorrow - just worried about shrinkage issues
Does anyone know whether salt bars lose water at a faster rate than rebatch?
I've done the 'wetting it with the hands' thing, so it works, but I wouldn't do that with fresh soap. How much? Not much. With solid soap, I rinsed it under the faucet, rubbed it a bit and made sure it wasn't dripping before putting it together with another solid soap. That was when using the soap welding method (mentioned
here &
here), but for soap where one is new and one is slightly older, I would only wet the older soap.
Unless, I am misunderstanding how you are doing this soap, it may be similar to something I've done a few times. I've made up a short layer of soap in a mold, let it sit a day or two (not necessarily gelling, though) in the mold and covered with plastic wrap. Then a couple of days later did the next layer. I that case, I simply sprayed lightly with water and scored the surface a bit (scratched it to created additional adherence surface. Then poured the raw soap batter on top. No problem with separation whatsoever when I've done that. Then I made sure to heat the entire soap in the oven at about 150° F to ensure gel for both/all layers.
So I would suggest scoring the surface of the re-batch layer after you get it wet, not dripping wet, just wet. Then heat the soap as in the welding method to ensure both layers are gelled. I do not know for sure, but it seems as though possibly an ungelled layer might not adhere as well. But I don't that for a fact, so I could be wrong on that count.
I doubt that salt bars lose water at a faster rate because salt attracts water. What would probably happen, though is IF one layer contains salt and the other layer doesn't, then you might end up with water migrating out of the salt-free layer into the salt layer. That could possibly create a separation problem due to the disparity in formulas.
For me, anytime I have done the above methods, the soap formulas were either the same or very similar, meaning if salt was in one layer, it was also in the other layer. But I've never done it with actual high salt content in either layer.
