Soap making tools

[GraciousGraphics]

Hi all, I've been member of the forum for a while but I'm not a soap maker.

As I've received a couple of reminders to ask 'How's it going?', and I don't want to lose forum membership, I thought it would be a good idea to post a photo or two of some of the tools made for soap makers in New Zealand.

Because the freight costs from the USA are quite high, people I knew asked me to design and make a soap slice cutter for them, and the pics show the latest iteration.

It would be too expensive to export to the states, but perhaps the design might encourage users with a laser cutter to make their own!

One of the pics shows a slice cutter, the other is a log cutter

Regards from the shaky city of Christchurch, New Zealand,
Bob

 

[Kittish]

Is the arm on the slicer metal or acrylic? Those look good.

 

[GraciousGraphics]

Soap slice cutter

Is the arm on the slicer metal or acrylic? Those look good.

It's all acrylic apart from the base which is bamboo.
The arm itself is a laminated 'sandwich' of 3 acrylic parts, with the middle one doing the work of holding the wire end. The acrylic is normally clear, I only used black for that one because I'd temporarily run out, and it does make photo-taking easier of course.

It's a bit like the old saw: "When all you've got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail"
The laser cutter is my retirement hobby, so I tend to look for ways to make things with it, and acrylic is a preferred choice of material.

The other photo, of a log cutter, shows it's mostly made of wood - not my favorite material since it never seems to come out how I want it to! But for this job it only needs to be cut to length, and even a klutz like me can manage that.

 

[Kittish]

Can you post a pic of the loaf splitter that shows it from the other end? I'm curious about how the wire is attached to the frame.

 

[GraciousGraphics]

Can you post a pic of the loaf splitter that shows it from the other end? I'm curious about how the wire is attached to the frame.

Here you go...
The wire passes through TWO slotted acrylic guides on EACH side, the inner one is fixed (after being accurately located) with a pin and has a mm scale that ranges from 20 to 70mm
The outer guide has a vertical sliding movement of about 6mm and there are several slots in both parts, located 5mm apart.
The combination allows the wire height to be set anywhere in the range of 20 to 70mm, but without the sliding part having to move by that much.
So by choosing one set of slots, the wire can be adjusted up/down by 5mm, if more adjustment is needed then the wire is loosened off and moved to the next set of slots.
The photo is actually out of date, I've since changed the acrylic parts to allow moving the wire to a different slot without having to take it off completely and re-thread it all.
The latest version also has a steel 'L' bracket, to prevent the wire tension pulling the sides in and keep the base/side at 90°