rebatching help

[Peppermint Lady]

I'm sure this has been posted a million times but I couldn't find it by searching. Just made my first batch of soap ever and I didn't use my digital scale to measure out the lye... instead I went by the hash marks on the measuring container. On my second batch out of curiousity I weighed the lye first before mixing and the hash marks were incorrect. My first batch has way too much lye. I did the lick test and it zapped me. Can I re-batch this soap? If so, do I add less or no lye to the new batch to compensate for the heavy lye soap? Here is the recipe I followed:

32 oz olive oil
2 oz beeswax
3 oz lye (bad measurement, was actually closer to 5 oz)
10 oz distilled water
1 oz cedarwood essential oil

Thanks for reading.

 

[BakingNana]

Oooops...I'm afraid you've found out the hard way that the ONLY way to measure lye is by weight with an accurate scale. Trying to measure lye any other way just about guarantees disaster. I hope this doesn't discourage you...Keep at it! It's sooo much fun, and so satisfying to make soap.

Do you mind my asking where you got your recipe? Unless I'm doing something really wrong, to use 3 oz. lye would be about 32% superfatted, which I've never heard of....anyone else want to weigh in here?

When I run your recipe through SoapCalc with 5 superfat, I get 4.25 oz. lye and 12.92 oz. water at 38% water. 33% water is 8.49 (lye stays the same, of course). Zero superfat I get 4.5 oz. lye. Are you familiar with the soap calculators available on the net? I never make soap from any published recipe without running it through a calculator to verify the water/lye. There are several good calcs; SoapCalc is my favorite, but MMS is good as well as several others. What you're making is basically a European style castile, which coincidentally I made this afternoon myself! I make a 0% superfat castile for my mother-in-law, and that one will zap the first day or two, but after that it's OK. You might want to just wait a day or two and test it again, since you're really not sure how much lye you really used. I HATE rebatching, so I'm no help to you there. If it doesn't zap in a day or two, I'd give it a good long cure since it's probably at or close to 0% SF. Was it hard as a rock in just a few hours? My 0% always is!

...and don't you just LOVE cedarwood? It's my sons' favorite--all 3 of them!

Anyone else want to check my figures and comment here?

 

[Peppermint Lady]

Yes it hardened pretty fast compared to my second batch. I will from now on use a soap calculator. The recipe I typed might be a little off from the one I went by in the book. Thank you.

 

[BakingNana]

I hope you have as much fun with it as I do, Peppermint! Good luck!! Post pics if you can...everyone loves to see soap.