we know that times our tough right now for everyone. Plenty of customers want to include handmade soap into their line of products but have a problem with our six loaf minimum. So, we’ve decided to drop the ordering minimum for wholesale soap down to only three loaves of soap.

A three loaf minimum on wholesale soap would make an order be as low as only $68.00, depending on what soap what ordered. The $68.00 example is when a customer wants to buy an entire block of oatmeal honey soap.

We hope this new, lower minimum will make it easier for our customers to order the soaps they need, when they need them and still take advantage of the wholesale price.

The number one question we receive is, how do I cut the loaf of soap into bars?  What do I use?

how to cut soap

For years, we have used a wooden mitre box and a pastry scraper to cut the soap.  If you choose to use a knife to cut with, make sure it is large enough to slice all the way through the loaf of soap — but, too large of a blade or too thick of a blade can cut away more soap than is needed.

If possible, invest in one of the better pastry scrapers, the kind with the firm or wooden handle attached.  They also come as one piece of metal with a curve on the end for the handle, but this type tends to warp over time.  They are, however, more affordable – usually only about $6.95.  The better scrapers should run around $15 and up.

The reason we choose a wooden mitre box as a guide for cutting a soap is simple — it can be altered.  Most mitre boxes do not have grooves that go all the way down to the floor of the mitre box.  With a wooden model, you can insert a saw into the straight cut (you do not want to cut your soap on an angle for regular bars) and finish sawing the groove down to the floor of the mitre box.  This insures that your bars of soap will be cut all the way through.

In the very near future, we will begin filming our series of Green Guys videos.  One of the demonstration videos will be on how to cut a loaf of soap with a mitre box and a pastry scraper.

Now is the time to decide how wide you want your bars to be. Most people choose to cut their soaps into a one inch thickness. At Green Pergola, we cut our soap bars 1.25 inches thick, which gives us 12 bars from a loaf of soap. When you decide your thickness, measure over from the straight cut and make a mark on top of the mitre box to the right of the guide.

So, slide the soap loaf into the mitre box from the left and bring the edge of the soap over to the mark you’ve made on the top of the mitre box. Now, take your pastry scraper and start from the back side and begin sliding the blade into the soap loaf in a rocking down motion until the blade falls into the straight groove closest to you. You have now cut your first bar of soap off of your soap loaf. Repeat until finished. Any left over soap pieces, save for yourself or use as soap samples.

The soap by the loaf site is back in full swing and many of our former customers are ordering from us again. There are 40 pounds of soap logs waiting to be shipped out to one customer and another fifty soap logs have been made for pending orders.

With our new soap molds, it took a while to get the hang of cutting the large block of soap into small logs of soap. Luckily, the first five logs of soap were for our own use and by the time we got to the sixth log, it was easy to get a straight cut.

So far, these are the tops selling soap logs on the soap by the loaf site:

garden mint soap log
lavender soap log
lemongrass sage soap log
oatmeal milk and honey soap log
orange ylang-ylang soap log
clove soap log

Those are the choices that seem to be on everyone’s list. I’m sure our old customers are doing an initial restocking of all the soaps that sold well for them in the past. As a little time passes, I’m sure the orders will become more diverse and the rest of the soap logs will get equal opportunity attention.