I'm terrible at anything that involves straight lines. Maybe it has something to do with my apartment being slightly tilted—I have books under the legs of my furniture to even the surface areas out. Or maybe it's just one of the flaws of my personality. Like being awful at spelling.
My soap has suffered because of this. No matter how hard I try and how careful I am with measuring, scoring and cutting—my knife goes wonky half way through the cut and I end up with bars that look like parallelograms and trapezoids and shapes they don't have names for.
One of my New Year's Soap Resolutions is to cut straight, uniform bars—especially important as I'm going forward with packaging my short stories with my soap.
To solve this I bought a miter box—normally used for cutting 2x4's. There're slots in the box to keep your saw (or in my case knife) straight. Works like a charm. I cut these guys after four whiskey sours at Druid's.
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Straight little soldiers.
Days of Wine and Rosehips Beach Bars.
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There's only one little problem with the box. When the soap comes out of my silicone loaf mold, it's too wide to fit in the box. Because the mold is flexible, it allows the soap to expand. I have to cut the sides—a lot—to get it into the box.
Meaning, the sides of my bars will still have that distinctive Heather Holland Wheaton crookedness.
If you like this blog, check out my new one: The Haley Maxwell Soap Making Mysteries