Making Inexpensive Wooden Soap Molds

We made several wonderful soap molds (long boxes) out of ordinary pine boards. We sized these molds so each one holds six pounds of soap, and the molds are made with pegs, so all the pieces come apart. Before we make soap, we use plastic wrap to cover each mold piece that will come in contact with the soap (top, bottom, both ends, both sides), taping it on the back side to keep each inner surface smooth. The mold pieces are re-assembled (takes about a minute), we pour the soap into the boxes… then set the top piece in place. When the soap is ready to be removed from the molds, we just remove the pegs and pull off the tape and the wooden pieces, leaving a long block of soap covered with pieces of plastic wrap that pull off easily. This way we get a perfect surface on all four sides of the soap every time, because the tape keeps the plastic wrap smoothly stretched when the soap is poured in.

We were really disappointed with the commercial soap cutters that we tried… you know, the very expensive ones that are a long wooden three-sided box with various types of cutting devices… those cuts were terrible. Then we tried using one of our wooden soap molds and a big cheese cutter blade (wire). We cut our soaps an inch and a half thick, so we put the block of soap (plastic removed) in one of the soap molds (minus the ends) and advance the block to a measured mark on the cutting board. It’s amazingly easy to just pass the cheese cutter blade down against the end of the box, and if you keep the wire against the wood, you get a perfect cut every time.

The best part of this is that all these molds and the cutter cost next to nothing… and you can vary the wooden molds to be any size that you want.

–North Country Soap Making Library


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