Swirls in pvc pipe

[zajanatural]

Don't you just love his site!! I could spend hours on there, Nizzy is awesome FCS has an upright mold like that, but you don't have to line it. They also have one with 4 compartments to make 4 loafs at once. I see one of those in my future cause I love this look!

 

[Guest]

How did you use the swirly tool? Did you start swirling at the top of the pipe & keep swirling as you pushed it down into the soap batter?

Good question!!! I've been pondering that myself.


Also, that vertical log mold has got my imagination going. In fact I might build one this weekend. I think I need some garage and table saw time! (Picture me being played by Tim Allen.)

The great thing about that vertical log mold is that you have only one small exposed surface, so all your soap edges will be even and flat, not textured. Textured is sometimes good but flat is sometimes good too. I don't want all my bars to be perfectly rectangular, but the rectangular look is very professional looking. Sometimes professional looks good and sometimes the irregularities can give a good feeling of hand craftedness and make the soap look rustic. Both looks are good but rectangular bars take a fair amount of effort to avoid the rough edge. For me at least.

 

[Sudsy]

That looks amazing! I've never tried swirling in a pipe. I'm impressed!

 

[Guest]

Great job on the soaps! That is hard to do and yours look fantastic!

Thanks for the link Zaja. The problem I had with pvc molds was getting the bottom half of the soap swirl to look as good as the top. The tutorial you posted has a great idea to help fix that.

 

[Guest]

The tutorial you posted has a great idea to help fix that.

I've been giving swirling a great deal of thought over the last month. It looks deceptively easy. It's not even obvious until you have tried it a few times that there are important differences between techniques used in slab molds, log molds or tank molds. (I may have the wrong word, by 'tank' I mean the vertical rectangular molds.) And different in pipes too although pipes and tanks may be related if I have the right word.

With slab molds what you see is what you get. Try that in a log mold and you get pretty edges but uninspiring faces.

I've been imagining and working on ideas to improve my own decorations. One tool I made is two pieces of wood dowel with holes drilled at each end. The dowels are the length of the log mold and they are joined by about 6" pieces of cut paper hanger so that they stay parallel. You hold on to one dowel as a handle and the rectangular nature of the tool allows you to visualize where the submerged dowel is. The idea is that you keep the dowel parallel to the length of the mold so that everything you do is symmetrical along the full length. So far I've created some really nice marbling with this tool but all my pours have been too thick to get good swirls. I think I will eventually succeed.