Photos - Soap in the mold

Here are a couple of pics of the soap in the mold. You can see in the first pic a little bit of leaking on the left. Just needs a little bit of tightening up!

I didn't cover the soap, or otherwise insulate it. I usually don't, and usually have no problem with the soap going thru its gel stage. I didn't notice this batch gelling. Not that that's a bad thing. But I just wonder why. Do we need to use a thicker wood?