Howdy all, Chris here. Ericka's been meaning to take and catalog the progress that we have made in regards to soap molds, but seeing as how today is such a nice day, and we're "determined" to clean the house, I figured I'd beat her to the punch. So I grabbed the trusty blogger cam, and snapped some Vogue-tastic shots.
First to the runway is...the first set of molds.
These molds I put together out of the wood from a failed bookshelf that I had kicking around the house. There are a total of three in this series, with the two smaller ones now being used as saw horses for new molds...and the last taller one being a perfect storage unit for the bottles of scents and fragrances that Ericka uses in her soaps.
Alas, the three of these molds were never used to make soap.
Gears were changed, and we I made another series of three molds, this time instead of being a "loaf" orientation, we went with a "sheet" orientation. To facilitate getting the soap out of the mold, I had the great idea of including a side that pops off.
The downside to these molds was the fact that no matter what happened, you would have to scrape soap ash off the entire side that was exposed to air. The pop-off side did make a difference, and each mold has been marked with cutting lines. But from a bang-to-buck ratio, we're still in the minor leagues.
This is where the latest version of the soap mold comes into play.
You might notice a little piece of brass along the center, that's the key to this mold. It uses a long piano hinge to let the long side of the mold flip down, which gives the soaper access to most of the surfaces she needs to work with to remove the soap from the mold. In addition, it is wide enough for just one bar, but when cut at 1.25" increments, you now have 12 perfectly formed bars. It is also tall enough to accomodate enough material for a double batch, giving you a total of 24 bars.
After making the first batch, I felt things could be improved even more. It took me 30 minutes to get all the soap out, and I didn't like how much work it ended up being. So I went back to the drawing board (really just a piece of cardboard), and came up with this:
Something was still missing, however. And that was "How can we best CUT the soap out of the mold?" Up until now, we've been using a flat, thin drywall knife, but it didn't have quite enough depth to get all the way through a double batch. So I was thinking about another method, and felt that fishing line might do the trick. Unfortunately, the apartment doesn't have any fishing line growing on trees, so we had to run out and get some. When the first place we went to didn't carry fishing supplies (and it was getting late), we called it a night. On the way to knitting the next day, we stopped at AC Moore, and I ran straight for the clay section. For much less than fishing line would cost, I brought home a wire cutter for clay use. With the double-flip mold, we now have access to every surface of the soap, and the clay cutter should do the trick.
I'm still trying to find a better latching solution for the double-flip mold. Right now its all hook-and-eye, and I'd like something more secure, such as the flip-latches you see on tool boxes, or maybe even the rotating latches used for house windows.
Well, I guess it just proves that things keep evolving...
This is Ericka putting in a tiny edit as a note to Heather. Know how we said the bars were all a healthy 4 oz? We lied. With the way things are going (and staying) they are a healthy six ounces. That's just how we roll.
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