Rebatching Soap Instructions from Soap Making Essentials

There are 4 primary ways to make soap: Cold Process, Hot Process, Melt and Pour and Rebatching. Rebatching soap or hand milling soap is the act of reprocessing a previously made batch of soap. You are probably wondering why anyone would consider making soap by this technique? Well according to Soap Making Essentials, a soapmaker would consider the rebatched process of making soap to use up leftover soap bits, to repair a batch of soap that is short on ingredients or just plain ugly or to economize on expensive essential oils. ie. rose absolute.

In the article Rebatching Soap Instructions from Soap Making Essentials takes you the various ways you can make a bar of soap through the rebatching process. The article discusses two ways that you can rebatch soap - The Crockpot Method and Boil-n-Bag. The author of this article says that the crockpot method is much easier than the standard stove stop process or the oven process. As of the Boil-n-Bag method, the author is great because you don't have to worry about scorching and there is very little clean-up and recommends that you use a small amount of soap scraps.

So if you have rebatched soap by either of the stove top or oven methods and you have not had success, then you may want to try these two new techniques. Or if you are trying this method for this very first time, you may want to either of these. Give it a try and let us know how it went.

Tips for Handmilling Your Cold Process Soap

Handmilling is a fun way to vamp up your soap. Handmilling involves grating and melting down some week-old handmade lye soap in a microwave, doubleboiler, crockpot, or in a double-bagged ziploc dropped directly in gently boiling water. Whichever method you choose, the goal is to melt down your soap until it is runny or mushy. Be sure that after you grate your soap (use a cheese grater) that you add a little liquid to help it melt and avoid drying out. You can add water, milk, oil, an herbal infusion, fruit juice, or anything of that nature. Handmilling is far less "precise" practice than cold processing. As with cooking, in handmilling you just add a punch of this or that until the mixture looks about right. For one pound of shredded soap, I usually add about one cup of liquid. If you aren't sure, just add a little liquid as you go until it has the consistency that seems right to you.

Microwaving, while convenient, is probably the worst way to melt down your cold process soap because it doesn't thoroughly and uniformly heat the soap. For example, some parts of the soap can get dry and crusty while other parts are just starting to melt. However, some soapmakers swear by the microwave method. Be sure to microwave your soap in short bursts to avoid overcooking it. It doesn't take much for the soap to expand and spill out of the container.

Melting down your soap shreds in a crockpot slowly over the course of a few hours is supposed to produce the finest quality handmilled soap. The double boiler method involves boiling water in a large stock pot with your soap shreds sitting in a bowl on top of the pot. The steam heats and melts the soap in about 30-60 minutes. Don't let the pot boil dry. Probably the most popular and relatively simple way to handmill your soap is with double-bagged ziplocs in boiling water. With this method, place your soap shreds and liquid in a ziploc and place that into another ziploc. Place this in a pot of gently boiling water for about 30 minutes until it is soft or liquidy. The ziplocs will feel like they're getting thin in the hot water, but they will survive the extreme temperature just fine. The bags may also fill with steam as they boil—this is normal.

After you've melted your soap, mix in your additives (colorants, scents, dried herbs, etc) and mix well. How much scent or colorant should you add? Whatever looks right to you. Be sure to sniff the soap and make sure it smells a bit on the strong side as the scent will fade when the soap cures. If you are using the popular ziploc bag method, put your additives directly into the bag, seal it, and knead the bag. After mixing in your additives, cut a bottom corner off the ziploc and squeeze the handmilled soap out of the cut into the mold. Tap the mold several times on your countertop to help pack it down and remove air bubbles. Cover your molds with saran wrap and cure as usual.

Source: http://how2makesoap.net/Articles.html#Colorants

Handmilled Soap Tutorial

If you are interested in making soap by the handmilled method, then check out this tutorial from Soap Making Supplies and Tutorials.This tutorial explains the basic process involves five simple steps.  If you follow each step, youu should be able create your very own rebarched soap.

1. Make a plain soap base from scratch using the cold process method or hot process methtod but do not add any extra essential oils, dyes, or nutrients. In other words, create your initial soap using only the ingredients that actually take part in the saponification reaction.

By the end of this initial stage you should have made a basic, pure, unscented soap base with no other additions. Note that some soap makers do add some of the extra ingredients during the cold process procedure, but most add them later on in the milled soap process.

2. After the soap base is fully hardened, grate it into small pieces and melt in a microwave, crock-pot, or double boiler. You may want to put the grated soap in a heat resistant heavy duty plastic bag so that you can snip off the end for easy dispensing. This also allows you to easily mix the extra nutrients added into the soap by kneading the soap within the bag.

Remember, if you did not wait for the soap to fully cure, it can still be somewhat caustic. So make sure you follow these soap making safety guidelines!

3. Once the soap base is liquefied, add the essential oils, soap dye and various nutrients and mix the concoction until the soap is one solid color.

4. Now pour the soap into a pre-designed soap making mold, or wooden loaf soap mold to harden.

5. After the soap bars are solid, take them out of the mold and lay them on a rack to further cure

Keep in mind that you don't need to do this if you already waited the initial 3-8 weeks for the soap that you made from scratch to completely cure before grating.

6. Before using hand milled soap, or any homemade soap for that matter, always test the PH levels to make sure the soap is completely safe.

Soap Queen TV Presents: How to Make Rebatch Soap

Anne-Marie shows you how to make Rebatch Soap aka french milled soap. Rebatch is the perfect soap if you aren't ready to take Cold Process soap and lye but want something more natural than melt & pour soap.The ingredients used in this episode are as follows:

1 oz. Pink Grapefruit Essential Oil
1 oz. Lemon Essential Oil
2 oz. Dried Calendula (Marigold) Petals
1/2 oz. Sweet Almond Oil
1/2 oz. Annatto Seeds
4 pounds Basic Rebatch
3 Tbsp. Distilled Water

Molds used were:

ELF Slim Rectangle mold
Bramble Berry's 2 pound loaf mold
Plastic food container

Anne-Marie Faiola is the owner of Bramble Berry brambleberry.com, author of Soap Queen Blog soapqueen.com, and developer of Teach Soap teachsoap.com.


Soap Queen TV: How to Make Rebatch Soap from Soap Queen on Vimeo.

How to Make Triple Milled or Hand Milled Soap

IF you happen to be nervous working with lye and you still want to make soap, here are a few links on how to make soap by the Handmilled method:

http://www.ehow.com/how_5533974_make-milled-hand-milled-soap.html

http://www.ehow.com/how_4882653_make-handmilled-soap.html

http://www.ehow.com/how_5510271_make-handmilled-soaps.html

INSTRUCTIONS FOR REBATCHING

If you are interested in making your soaps by the rebatching or handmilled method and you cannot find a class to learn this technique, here is some information from PV Soap:

Basic Materials:

Shredded Soap Base
Crock pot, small or medium size
Glass measuring cup
Wooden spoon
Whole milk or 2%
Powdered milk (secret ingredient)
Any additives, such as herb, flowers, grains, cornmeal, oatmeal, etc.
Colorant chips or liquid dye (optional)
Any fragrance oil or essential oil *(fragrance oils work great in rebatching)
Optional: additional oils such as sweet almond, jojoba, vitamin E
Mold/s (lightly greased with Vaseline)
Drying rack

You may half, quarter or double this recipe as needed.

Rebatching is a good way to get the feel for soap-making without having to handle any caustic ingredients. You can also use a double boiler, but we recommend the crock pot method. Takes about 2 hrs. to make.

Start by measuring out 4-6 cups of shredded base soap or as much as will fit into your crock pot without going past the half-way mark. Measure out about 1 cup of milk (you'll add this as needed, you may not use it all or you may need to add a bit more). Add ½ cup of milk to the crock pot and the shredded soap, put the lid on the pot and set it on the lowest temperature setting. Check the mixture every 15 min. or so and gently stir with your wooden spoon, but try not to make bubbles. If it looks very dry, add a little more milk, and so on, until all the shredded soap is melted.

After an hour or so, it should have the consistency of soft mashed potatoes. It also may look lumpy. Add about ½ cup of powdered milk. The powdered milk will make the mixture very smooth and easy to pour. Go ahead and add any additional ingredients, such as, Vit. E or grapefruit seed extract (which act as a preservative). You can also add additional oils ( ½ -1 tsp.) such as, castor (for shampoo like lather), almond oil or jojoba oil, etc. at this time.

When you're ready to add your colorant, herbs, and fragrance, remove the amount of soap needed for your size mold from the crock pot and place it into the measuring cup. Mix in your final ingredients, amounts of color, herbs, fragrance will vary depending on your liking, and pour into molds.

The soap should be easy to pour, but not too runny. Leave your soap in their molds overnight or until dry and remove the next dry. If you're having difficulty removing from the mold, place mold into the freezer for a few minutes for easier release.

Cure them for 1 week on a drying rack. Wrap individual soaps to preserve their scent.

Tip: As long as your crock pot is set at the lowest temperature, your can leave your soap simmering until your ready to mix and mold. Just check it to be sure it doesn't get too dry.

Source: http://www.pvsoap.com/instructionsforrebatch.htm