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Are you ready to scale up your soap making production? If so, then you’ve come to the right place! In this blog post, we’ll discuss and demonstrate how to increase your capacity without breaking the bank with expensive equipment. Whether you’re a beginner or an experienced soapmaker, this post will provide you with the guidance and tips to create large batches of soap in a slab mold. Let’s get started!
Gaining Familiarity with Soapmaking
Before diving into scaling up, it’s important that you have a basic foundation and comfort level with soapmaking. It’s important to become familiar with the ingredients, supplies, and techniques needed to produce soap. Doing so can make soap making more enjoyable, reduce soap-making mistakes and inefficiencies, and help you as you begin to create larger batches. With the right knowledge and materials, soap makers can easily up their soap production without breaking a sweat. If you need training on how to make soap, consider enrolling in our online beginner soap making class.
Learning how to scale a recipe up or down can help maximize the amount of soap produced with each batch, as well as minimize waste caused by over-estimating or under-estimating demand for a certain kind of soap. Understanding the science behind saponification and properly calculating lye amounts can ensure that each batch of soap is well balanced and safe to use—essential components for increased production size.
Next, it’s time to start thinking about scaling up production to expand the reach of your business. Investing in a slab mold and understanding how to work with larger batch sizes is essential. Once you are confident in your soap making techniques and you have the demand for more than a 5 pound batch, its time to start scaling up.
Preparing to Make Large Batches of Soap
One of the first steps when it comes to preparing to make large batches of soap is to evaluate your current space and supplies. Determine if you have enough room for large soap molds, stirring tools, and where you will store the soap to cure. A larger scale production can be the difference between running a hobby-level soap business and a full fledged operation. The key is making sure that you have adequate space and materials to support the larger batch size. That means, if you’re not quite ready for the large molds, mixing bowls, and packing materials needed for larger production, it’s time to start expanding!
Click here to see our demonstration and discussion of making Turmeric Soap in a slab mold.
Here is another video of when I first started making soap in my slab mold. I have continued to use this process as it saves time and I am able to keep up with the demand for byZAkia.com
Choosing a Slab Mold for Soap Production
To increase your production size for homemade soap, creating a slab mold is the ideal solution. WHen it comes to choosing one that is right for you, consider how much ingredients it will take to fill it, how you will cut it and how you will store the finished bars.
This combination slab mold and log splitter is a great starter for increasing your production size.
The benefit of a slab mold is that it will allow you to create large batches of soap in a single pour, simplifying and streamlining the process. The benefits are obvious—no more melting and pouring batches of individual molds for hours on end! By using a slab mold you can create large batches in a fraction of the time, freeing you up to do the fun stuff like experimenting with new designs and ingredients. Plus, you’ll save money in the long run!
A simple homemade slab mold is easy to make from plywood and lined with food-grade silicone, a trash bag or parchment paper. The slab mold can also be angled so that gravity helps move the soap out of the mold, further reducing your workload and increasing batch sizes Thus, soap making just got a lot more efficient with the use of your very own homemade slab mold or purchased mold! With this handy slab mold, your soap production sizes increase substantially, allowing you to produce soap faster and with less effort.
Final Steps for Incorporating a Slab Mold into Your Soapmaking Process
Once you have your desired slab mold you will need o adjust your recipe to fill the mold. Be sure to adjust appropriately to ensure you don’t have too much or too little batter. Next you will need to determine what supplies you will need to mix larger quantities of your ingredient. In the video above, I demonstrated using two stainless steel pots. Each pot held 15 pounds of soap mixture. This allowed me to scale up and fill my 30 pound slab mold.
You would make your soap using your normal process, pour the soap into the slab mold and allow it to sit for 24 hours. Once it sits you will need a log splitter and soap cutter to go from a slab to a log to individual bars. After you have cut your bars the last step is to let it cure normally.
With the right tools and ingredients, anyone can increase their production size for homemade soap with ease. Simply combine the oil and lye, mix and stir until it reaches trace, add scents or herbs as desired, pour into slab molds, let sit until hardened, then cut and allow to cure. It’s that simple!
Conclusion
In conclusion, making large batches of soap in a slab mold is a great way to make soap both economically and quickly.
So go ahead and give it a try—your soap-production dreams are just one slab mold away.
Thanks for sharing!!! My husband just picked up a huge soap mold a lady was giving away! When I measured it out 24x14x3.5 my calculations came to 38 pounds of soap! I was curious what are the dimensions of yours? Thanks! New Sub! ~jc
Hello Zakia. How do we purchase your products? Thanks for the videos.
Hi Rosalyn,
Most of my products are available on the website at ByZakia.com thanks for watching
And is it silicon mold?
Pls where did you buy the large soap mold?
love it, great job.
Thank you
How did you donyour formula? Did you double or triple your formula?
I create all of my recipes from scratch. When you enter a recipe in soap calculator you are able to identify how much soap you want in the final batch in my case I was making 30 pounds of soap
I have found you!? I was lovingthegk on Periscope.
Yayyyyyy hey if you are on FB send me a request there
@Zakia Ringgold will do
Thank you!
Looks Great!
Can you tell the names of what u use word for word ? I would like to make my own soap but I don’t know how to start
Wow!!! That was amazing. The largest batch I have made was yesterday – 17 lbs (total) it was Honey Oatmeal – I didn’t pour it into a large mold but 2 loaf molds and then some trees and snowflakes for the coming holidays. Glad to have stumbled across your channel! Happy Soaping!!!
ZiegenVine Homestead – Allison & Randy that was such an interesting and misbehaving batch I was just happy to get it all into the mold
What did you line your mold with?
@Zakia Ringgold Would you share what brand and size? Did you have to cut them? Yours look lined really well in the corners. Did you have to do anything special to achieve that? Thanks for responding.
Where did you get the 30lb mold from?
Look on Etsy. Google 30lb wood molds.
I was hoping you would have cut the soap.
You should look up how candy makers on youtube make their huge batches with big pots. Maybe the cabdy industry has things to help you for your soap making.
That’s a great idea. Thank you for the tip
did you make that mold?