I'm looking for some new moulds for my cold process soapmaking. Most moulds available are meant for melt and pour soaps and don't take the heat well from cold process or are so expensive I can't afford them. I was thinking of using a wooden seed tray but I'm not sure of the best thing to use to line it with or how long to leave it in the tray so it isn't too soft to cut or too hard to cut. Any ideas?
PB.
I've heard of chocolate box trays used as moulds for guest size soaps (Cab?), Pringles tubes for sliceable rounds (Alison?) and veg containers (book?)...I know they don't do melt and pour, but I don't know if the cold process is hotter than the other one...whose name I can't remember. Hot process?
I think it is Baldwins (supplier of all things home cosmeticcy) that sells a wooden mould, I have no idea where I have put the catalogue but you could check their site and see if they mention a lining material. Baking parchment springs to mind (non stick and withstands high temps) but I really have no clue, being truly a soap virgin (oh please, Google ads, nooooooo ).
sally_in_wales Downsizer Moderator
Joined: 06 Mar 2005 Posts: 20809 Location: sunny wales
Posted: Fri Jul 15, 05 6:08 am Post subject:
You can line wooden moulds with binbags or clingfilm, which also helps when you unmould the soap. I often use a (otherwise unused!) cat litter tray for really big batches of laundry soap, that works well, also plastic food boxes work well. Flimsy moulds can be supported on sand and that often helps a lot.
Now why didn't I think of that? Cat litter tray....Perfect.
I've tried most of the others and the only one I didn't get along with was the pringles tube. I hate the way it gels in the middle. I use the chocolate box inners for using up the bits that won't make a whole bar of soap and keep them all for little gift bags of mixed soaps and stuff.
I've used chocolate tray inserts (as Bugs said), old takeaway tubs, yoghurt pots, trays vegetables came in... All manner of things. By trace the soap is usually plenty cool enough, so I use whatever expendable mold I have. I've used some takeaway trays (the plastic ones with lids) over and over again.
More recently I've started using silica baking molds; so far, so good.
I bought some nice oval soap moulds from ebay. Six to a sheet, five sheets for �2.50! Very reasonable. Then I tried hot process and popped it in the moulds whereupon they all promptly melted in a hot sticky mess...
Lesson learned and on to the next batch.
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