Can you melt regular bar soap and remold? Probably a dumb question but very curious?
T~ism

I think I've read some posts on threads here about that but personally I haven't had much luck. Maybe cuz of the soaps I tried to revamp. I tend to do better just getting the big 20 oz or 2# block of melt-n-pour soap bases that Michael's puts on sale every other month or so (usually $8.99, sale $5.99). I think in the long run ounce per ounce it may even work out cheaper than redoing bar soap.

The only kind of soap that you can melt and reshape are the glycerin based (the clear ones)soaps. The solid colored soaps (dial, ivory, and the like) all have chemical hardeners in them so they wont melt in a microwave or double boiler.

The best rule of thumb is that if you can see your hand through it you can melt it. Also you can look at the ingredients and look for glycerine.

You can always chop up those old bars of dial or ivory and put them in your melted glycerine soap though and have it look suspended if you are trying to find and alternative to the plain bar of white soap in the bathroom!

If you put regular soap in the microwave it expands and looks like it's foam, but it's not because it's hard. Eventually it starts to burn and smells nasty. It gets soft in a play-doh sort of way, but that doesn't last long. Then your microwave will smell like soap for a few days.

you can do this to a certain extent, but it requires grating the soap, mixing, boiling and molding. then it takes a while to resolidify. they always looked sorta lumpy/icky to me, but it can be done. you'd want to try it with natural castile soaps or equivalents....like dr. bronners or whatever else your health store or organic store sells.

i think the term normally used is rebatching soap, and you can probably do a search on it on the net. i'd post more detailed instructions, but i don't have my book handy and i'm in the midst of a nasty paper.

http://www.brambleberry.com/rebatching.html ;-)