What do you do with your mistakes ?

[Guy]

Simple enough question...

Sooooo what does one do with mistake batches ? Do ya cut em up into sample pieces and sell em as samples ?
Do ya trash em ? Use em an dont buy soap for a few months ? Give em away ? Try to save em some how and sell them at a discounted price ? Or is there a way to rework a bad batch an make it right ?

 

[earlene]

What I do with mistakes depends on what the mistake is and if the resulting soap is still good soap or not. Some mistakes have been bad enough that I tossed the soap because trying to correct it was not worth the effort. Most of the time, it was more along the lines of something I could correct by re-batching. An ugly soap, so long as it's good soap can be felted and turned into something lovely.

 

[MarnieSoapien]

I think it depends on what went wrong. If it's a coloration thing that you're not happy with you could felt it, give it away to friends and family who don't mind ugly soap, use it yourself, shred it and make confetti soap, cut it up and use it as embeds or rebatch it.
If it's a recipe problem, then I personally am hesitant to give those away or sell them. If I don't like a product, then I usually suck it up and use them myself or you can rebatch them. I am in the same situation myself right now, where I have several soaps that I find too drying and I'm trying to decide what to do with those. I have never tried rebatching soaps and I really want to try a confetti soap, so I might make a small batch that is less drying and add the soaps and hope for the best!

 

[Dawni]

I am in the same situation myself right now, where I have several soaps that I find too drying and I'm trying to decide what to do with those. I have never tried rebatching soaps and I really want to try a confetti soap, so I might make a small batch that is less drying and add the soaps and hope for the best!

I fortunately have not mucked up where I needed to compute for additional superfat or lye, and all my soap so far is usable soap, even if some are ugly lol

I've rebatched a few in the microwave. Works for small amounts in my opinion, like 2 or 3 bars (I mold them in recycled margarine tubs so I'll remember which ones are the micro rebatch). But time consuming. I mix hard after 1min bursts and resulting soaps are rock hard.

I've rebatched one full batch in the slow cooker. Not doing that again. Took forever to melt and I didn't like the consistency.

What I do with soap I find too drying is grate it and add it to oils of a new soap that would maybe compensate for the dryness, then add my lye and proceed as normal. I noticed this works both in HP and CP btw.

 

[lsg]

As was stated earlier, it depends on what kind of mistake. I only sell to friends of family and by word of mouth so any ugly soap, my family uses. By using a lye calculator and checking off ingredients in a printed recipe, one can avoid lye-heavy soap. Many people shred ugly soap and use it in a new recipe as confetti. You can also rebatch using shredded soap and water in the slow cooker, in the oven or in a double boiler.

 

[MarnieSoapien]

I guess an important question is, what went wrong with the batch to make you label it a mistake?

 

[penelopejane]

[QUOTE="Dawni, post: 762073,
What I do with soap I find too drying is grate it and add it to oils of a new soap that would maybe compensate for the dryness, then add my lye and proceed as normal. I noticed this works both in HP and CP btw.[/QUOTE]
Easier way to make confetti soap: make new batter (including lye and FO (if you use it)) and take it to light trace and add grated confetti at 1:1 mixing by hand. Then pour into mold.

 

[Dawni]

Easier way to make confetti soap: make new batter (including lye and FO (if you use it)) and take it to light trace and add grated confetti at 1:1 mixing by hand. Then pour into mold.

Yes, for confetti. For fugly or drying soaps, or for crumbly/powdery soap that's too small/fine for confetti, I rebatch mine into fresh batter, like I mentioned above.

 

[snappyllama]

I only soap as a fun hobby and give away what I make. My batches are small (around 1-2 lbs). I make around 5-10 batches a month. A lose isn't that big of a deal. I always wait about three months to see if a batch improves.For me it depends on the mistake.

Anything that would require a rebatch (FO morph that wont fade, Too Soft, Crumbly, whatever)
I'll just chunk it. I don't like my rebatched soaps' appearance, and the effort/reward just isn't in there for me. As MeeMaw would say "Donchta go throwin' good money after bad". Thankfully this doesn't happen very often (2 times a year or so). If it was a more regular occurrence, I'd probably reconsider things.

Regular "Ugly" And I Don't Love the Scent
Confetti unless it will produce brown confetti. I always have more brown confetti than I can use - so those get chunked.

Regular "Ugly" And I Love the Scent
I just keep them.