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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