# homemade dryer cabinet



## a4patch (Oct 7, 2009)

My husband put together a dryer cabinet for us. It is a five shelf plastic shelf from Lowe's. Anthony wrapped the perimeter of the shelf with black plastic. Inside we placed a small heater with a thermometer in the bottom of the unit. The plastic is on all sides minus the top. The individual shelves have holes so the air from the heater can rise through the top. We have an air conditioner to hopefully remove the humidity.


I have the temperature /humidity units on the inside of the black shelf and a second on the outside to measure the humidity and temp.

At this point there is only a 10% difference in humidity.

How low should I go on humidity and how high on the thermometer on the heater?

Any suggestions are welcomed.


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## a4patch (Oct 7, 2009)

I just checked the temp and humidity. I am not sure it is wicking any moisture. 


Humidity is 55%on the outside and 41% on the inside.
Temp is 70 on the outside and 81 on the inside.


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## Anita Martin (Dec 26, 2007)

I've been using a food dehydrator for some soaps that are taking forever to cure. It seems to work pretty good. I have no idea what the humidity is inside but at lease there is a temp. guage on it. I also have been using a fan in our back pantry/soap room. That really helps speed the process too. I like your idea of a drying cabinet. We just don't have room in our house for 4000 bars of soap to be sitting around curing for weeks at a time.


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## a4patch (Oct 7, 2009)

do you have 4000 bars of soap ready??? Wow


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## NubianSoaps.com (Oct 26, 2007)

One of my cabinets holds the soap in the mold and it is set at 135, this way it is below all the flashpoints of my scents. The soap curer, for soap once cut, will be set at 90 degrees, since the only person I know who uses it doesn't worry about humidity, and her cure cabinet is a closet (maybe 8 by 10 walk in) with and exhust fan (like you see in a bathroom) with a dehumidifier....set on high when the soap first comes in, low for 5 days...the shelves are slatted so their is good circulation, she doesn't cure her soap for more than 6 days, wrapped and gone. When visiting her (the gal south of you) it was 90 degrees in the closet.....my problem is going to be shelf space for a week of cure, right now I only have 3 cabinets. I didn't want to waste so much space in the new space on actual space to dry soap, it's enough to have storage space for wrapped and unwrapped bars ready for sale. I hate having my soap sitting on shelves open to a room for 2 or 3 weeks, you not only loose scent they get dusty. Vicki


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## a4patch (Oct 7, 2009)

I have read this a couple of times to make sure I understand. It sounds like my temp is no where near a good temp. I need to raise it some more. We were hoping to avoid a dehumidifier. I may have to break down and get one. This is ok.


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## Kalne (Oct 25, 2007)

6 days cure time?! That sounds incredible. Every time I have tried OPing i haven't liked the results. My soap turns darker than usual which I hate. What's the sense in pretty coloring if it's all going to turn muddy looking. LOL I also get weird texture on top where I spritz with alcohol to keep ash away.....and I'm not giving that up. LOL Do you all cover your soaps when you put them in the oven? I can't help but cover them. Maybe that's what I'm doing wrong. Or maybe it's just that my oven won't go lower than 170. And what about salt bars? Mine are much better at 6 weeks cure time than 4. Seriously.


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## NubianSoaps.com (Oct 26, 2007)

All oil recipes are of course not going to speed dry in 9 days, the gal I went to visit uses tallow as the main portion of her soap. Her bars are rock hard. I prefer my bars to gell, yes the coloring goes more marbled opaque but I think it's beautiful. I rarely have ash because of my recipe, and simply embrace it in the two bars I do have it on. Curing is nothing more than wicking out moisture, which is exactly what a dehumidifier is for. As long as 170 degrees is not above your flash point it should have not effect on colors, it does cause oxidization to occur faster. If I put my OMH in the oven, or when I did, it was tanner than freshly cut soap, but it was the same color on the top as soap that had cured for 2 weeks. I will be over the moon when I can stop having to cure for 2 weeks. Vicki


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## Huminbird (Jul 22, 2008)

I have a guest room closet with a wire shelf (one of the kitchen ones from costco) in it where I am going to be drying my soap. I have ordered a dehumidifier and it will be here soon. I have a nice hard bar recipe and I am wondering how long I will need to cure my soaps. I do not OP, will that make a big difference?

I am hoping to get my cure time down to 2 weeks. How do you know when it is cured enough to wrap and ship?


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## NubianSoaps.com (Oct 26, 2007)

Nobody is really going to be able to help you with this. I live in very humid Texas near the gulf, the gal I visited this last early summer is closer the the gulf than I am, though in Mississippi. I am OPing when I get my addition, maybe sooner by simply putting them into my guest room  by using a cabinet, and then using the dryers. I have an airconditioner running 24/7 or a dehumidifier depending upon the temp outside. So is your closet big enough for it to be ran in their without heating up the soap too much? For myself soap is ready to be wrapped when it is hard, you just get a feel for it, also the soap has lost weight. In my humidity without AC, even at 3 weeks in an room with no AC soap can still be uncured and continue to loose weight in the wrapper in a store, you see this all this time when you pick up others soap, cigar bands slip off, the bars are swimming in their shrink wrap. Vicki


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## Jenny M (Nov 21, 2009)

Or you can move to the desert. Sorry, that's probably not a very helpful comment. But one of the reasons I moved here. I hated the humidity in Florida & Alabama. Here my soaps dry hard in a week to 10 days. It's cloudy today so the humidity is up in the high teens but a lot of days it's single digits.

On the other hand I would not have learned to make soap if this harsh environment had not damaged my skin. You gals back there probably have beautiful skin compared to my beef jerky skin.

Jenny


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## Kalne (Oct 25, 2007)

What about the ph of your soap? My research showed the ph continues to drop until 4-6 weeks and that curing/hardness, etc. had no effect. And it's that lower ph that makes your soap milder. Mind you, I didn't do any testing myself but have read the conclusions others came up with. I do know that I like my soap better at 6 weeks than 4. And hardness had nothing to do with it.


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## Jenny M (Nov 21, 2009)

Kathy, that's an odd coincidence. I do test periodically but I only have strips - no meter. Today I was checking a batch that I made on Sept 10 & it seemed extremely hard (did I leave out one of the oils?) to me so I brought a bar into the house & used it. Good lather, not harsh; but I made a slurry & tested it. It came out 7% which is not too bad. I dug out an old soap from the closet & made a slurry. It tested the same. I'm sure a meter would have given me more refined results.

What I know about PH testing comes from the Miller site which is 10 year old info by now. Does anyone have more up to date info? I guess i should do a better job of keeping up with this.

I usually wrap at about 10 days & then they go to the storage shelves but I often bring 3 day old bars into the house to test. I just really have not noticed any difference except that they do not last as long.

Jenny


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## NubianSoaps.com (Oct 26, 2007)

After sap is over, why would cure have any effect on PH? And if wicking moisture out raised PH it would be negligible. Labrat: It is science but it is not Rocket Science!


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## Huminbird (Jul 22, 2008)

I got my dehumidifier! Here in Washington State my apt stays about 45% humidity this time of year and I don't think I have seen it go lower than 30% indoors. I put my dehumidifier in the closet and it pulled out about half a cup in 24 hours. Not to bad. I make about 180 bars a week so my production is pretty low. 

Even with the dehumidifier I will probably let them cure for close to a month unless I run low and need to wrap some fresher bars. My stores are now getting their soap boxed and I just use the cigar bands for my farmers market and I think farmers market customers are not quite so picky if the band is a little loose. 

After having the dehumidifier in the closet for 24 hours it doesn't seem to get warmer than 80 in there. We keep our house in the high 60s this time of year. Its already getting cold up here in Washington. After they are wrapped I will be putting them on a different shelf so they don't shrink to much while wrapped.


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## NubianSoaps.com (Oct 26, 2007)

So you know the difference in what humidity is in Texas, most attach the drain hose at the bottom of dehumidifiers so we aren't having to empty the gallon containers about every 12 hours!!! They are excellent for your house in humid conditions, it keeps your furniture, rugs, drapes and wooden furniture in much better condition. Vicki


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## Huminbird (Jul 22, 2008)

I lived in an underground house for a while. In the winter the skylight would drip puddles at night because of the condensation. In that place we were tempted to put the dehumidifier in the bathtub during the day it because it gathered so much moisture. It probably didn't help that I was trying to dry my soap in that house.


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