Teach Soap

I was wondering if anyone has used HDPE molds and if so do they like them? I was thinking of them for use in CP. Do you perfer HDPE or silicone? I am currently using silicone and some times I find it takes a bit of time to get the soap pushed out.

I use both. For bigger batches I use HDPE.

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Irena
Closed minds are like faulty parachutes; they refuse to open.

Can you remove the soap as easily as they claim in the HDPE molds or do you still line them?

I don't line them. I use sodium lactate to help with unmolding and don't gel.

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Irena
Closed minds are like faulty parachutes; they refuse to open.

I just ordered some sodium lactate, I have had a few recipes that have been firm in the middle but gooey and sticking to the mold on the outside. than when i go to cut them they stick and it is a sucking sound when I pull them away from the knife. I have been letting them sit for 2 to 3 days and they are still like this, so I am hoping the sodium lactate will help them to dry out a bit faster.

If your soap is firm in the middle and sticky on the outside, you might be getting a partial gel.

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Irena
Closed minds are like faulty parachutes; they refuse to open.

Oh I'm crossing my fingers on the HDPE slab mold with dividers I poured 3 days ago. I haven't used it before so it's not seasoned. I was an idiot & didn't freezer paper the bottom. I don't know what I was thinking, but I only used cyclomethicone on the bottom, sides & dividers + sodium lactate. I did force gel, so I'm hoping that will help.

I'm going to use your freezer trick, Irena, to freeze it solid for a couple hours before I try to remove the bars. Oh well, I guess this is just part of learning to use hdpe slab molds.

It went better than expected and worse than expected. I didn't have any problems getting the sides & bottom of the slab off - it was the DIVIDERS that were a total pain. I ended up wasting a lot of soap trimming bars to clean them up.

I continue to be underwhelmed by slab molds. I was hoping that the embeds I did would have been special. They weren't. I don't like most slab surface-swirled soaps because they're usually uni or bi-dimensional (especially without dividers to pull a swirl down the sides). I just don't get slabs. I'm seeing nothing worth the time & effort of using them (until you get to multi-log production).

Signed,
Grumpy Slab User

That's too bad that you had a hard time getting the dividers off. Try rubbing them lightly with mineral oil or dimethicone (or cyclomethicone)

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Irena
Closed minds are like faulty parachutes; they refuse to open.

When I used my slab mold last, I left the dividers out. Once the soap was ready to be unmolded but still soft, I put the dividers together, set them on top of the soap (while still in the mold) and pushed down just enough to leave an impression, this gave me a great guideline for cutting and it didn't mess up my pretty swirls. Plus, if I was careful enough to get in the middle of the lines, it left a nice bevel on the edges of the soap. I always had trouble with the dividers sticking and so it's probably been 2 years since I used my slab mold. This method worked great for me. Just a thought.

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Haven

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Haven

Hi Grumpy,
I don't use a slab mold with dividers per say. I use storage boxes from Home Depot (cost about $5 each) and line them with plastic Ruffies kitchen garbage can liners. Mine makes 3 logs each. It works for me (especially since there's almost no clean up time). I would consider the plastic garbage bag liner and then do the trick HVRBA suggested with the dividers.

Jill