A family dinner was in the offing. It was an all-too-rare gathering of the clan, complete with the Intern. Velda was all atwitter with house preparation … and there was a problem.
The dining room table was full of drying soap and it had to go somewhere. And somehow, for that matter, since many of the bars were just sitting on butcher paper.
No problem: we’d been talking about me making her a Soap Drying Rack for, uh, months, and now I was on a clock. I had agreed to suspend my dislike of doing one-off projects in order to survive the paradigm, “Happy Wife, Happy Life.” Cutting board construction would have to wait.
That meant she had to commit to dimensions, as I can’t build what I can’t measure. The rack is 24″ square and 5′-10″ tall. It’s on locking casters to move (or not) as needed.
The 14 removable shelves each have slat bottoms with 3/4″ gaps between the slats to help with air movement. The unit is encased in screen cloth to help keep air-borne schmutz off the soap as it is drying. Since drying will take 6-8 weeks per batch, the bars will be sitting in the open air for a long time!
The rack will hold more than 1,000 bars of soap. Mrs M needs to get busy.
This is a tool: it’s not a piece of furniture. Therefore, I built it with utility in mind much more than aesthetics. One of the implications of that is that the wood selected was based on 1) what was on hand, 2) what was the right size for minimal milling, and 3) what was cost effective. Extremely cost effective = no trip to the lumber yard to build the project. Therefore, the woods are several species from deep in the lumber rack. I used redwood, pine, red oak and oak-veneered plywood.
NEWSFLASH, 9/28/2020 – I now sell a version of this Soap Drying Rack that can be shipped! If you’re interested in a purchase, go to Mr M’s Woodshop, here.
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How lucky you have each other! The drying rack is beautiful! Very well thought out!
and I’m working on filling it! It is perfect. Maybe we should just build a new house around our new hobbies storage needs cause we certainly don’t have room for two of these!
Well done, Henry!
Looks great – functional, neat, cost-efficient – terrific job, I’d say! And why do I think it’s going to be full sooner rather than later?? I can think of only one thing to add – a label-holder for the date the soap was put in each rack to dry!
Absolutely true! We talked about labeling the batches. For now, Velda’s just putting a card in front of each batch. Down the road, we may chalk paint the front of each tray, but clearly some manner of labeling is required to keep everything straight!
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How much?
This was a one-of-a-kind build for me, and was not intended to be shipped. If you want to pick up in our home in Santa Clarita, then please send me an email and we’ll discuss the project. Happy to help!
Was good to found this racking system, now my miss wants one 🙂
If you are a serious soapmaker, a rack like this is essential!
I wish I lived closer to Santa Clarita! This to me is the ideal soap curing rack. Kudos to you both.
Hi, this looks great, my girlfriend is just starting into soap making and now need a drying solution, this just might be it! Did you use any finish on the racks? I am thinking of making it out of cedar (fence planks) and pine (off cuts).
No finish. I left the wood raw.
Hi Henry – This is an awesome soap rack – thanks for sharing! My wife is also looking for something like this and I think it’s a pretty reasonable build, but I’m having some trouble sourcing what would be the bottom pieces of the rack. Did you just use a table saw to cut down some 2x[whatevers] into thin strips you used on the bottom or did you have a source for that 1/4″ or 3/8″ thick boards already?
Thanks!
Yes, the bottom strips on each soap tray were cut from, I believe, Redwood 2x4s that I had on hand from a fence build. 3/8″ thick strips were cut. You could plane down 3/4 stock, of course, but I think that’s wasteful. Cutting the long strips from softwood is easy as long as you use straight stock, which is seldom easy to find in the big box stores.
Hi Henry,
Thanks a bunch, that was what I suspected.
Alex
This rack looks really nice, but what kind of mesh did you use for the enclosure, and where did you get it?
I used screen cloth from Home Depot, as I recall. I don’t think this is an essential thing, in retrospect. I never put a door on the rack, so it’s always been open air.
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Do you have plans available for download by chance? 🙂
No, I don’t have any plans for sale, unfortunately. Sorry!
Love this ! 💕I’m in Australia so a bit to far to come buy one ☹so I’m just zooming in on the pics to work out how the shelf runners were made 🧐🤔
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