To the next level..............................

.................with our new mold. The first prototype was made with food grade pink silicone. But it didn't release as smoothly as we needed so Armond at http://www.chaseco.com/ made a prototype mold in a blue silicone. We are very pleased with the results.

No more putting the soap while still in the molds into the freezer for several hours so they will pop out more easily. The seams will be much nicer and I anticipate that there will be significantly less waste soap from having to trim and shape the unmolded soaps.
The heat retention during gel phase will be much better with the silicone molds. And the finished product just looks a bit nicer immediately at pop out.

We can't wait for the molds to be made and shipped to us for use.

This is going to be much more efficient and the best part is that we don't have to freeze the soaps in the mold. Yippeee!! There is a slight sticking in this first time but we hadn't sprayed the mold at all. We've used pam in the past but the manufacturer recommends food grade silicone mold release which should also prolong the life of the mold. We'll try that tomorrow, but still the little itty bit of sticking is so much less then our other plastic molds that we can certainly live with this. I didn't trim off the little bit of soap at the top before taking the picture.

Talk about a hiatus......................

I knew it had been a while since last posting, but it just seemed to get easier and easier to not update the blog. It seemed that February through June was very hectic for us and I'm not the most committed person when it comes to any kind of a journal. My pastor sort of summed it up pretty well and I think this could probably be on my grave marker: "I'm a good starter but not always a good finisher!".

Anyway, I have been able to get back to my hobby of prim furniture. Here is a neat secretary I picked up at auction as is:



And here is my attempt to make it prim:







It probably would still be at our home if Nancy could have figured out where she would put it. So now it is in the shop and we'll see if anyone else likes it enough to buy it and give it a home.