Like most new soapmakers, I spent a small fortune on all kinds of tools when I started my soapmaking career. One of them was a conventional wooden beveler.
The wooden beveler has a blade loaded, two grooves for beveling, and a drawer on the bottom to collect trimmings. (You might have used the same thing that I am talking about here…)
I never felt confident and comfortable when I placed my soap on the groove and slid through the blade, because I was not sure if I held the soap straight enough in order to get a straight and even cut.
Most of the time, the bevels were not even at all and the blade shaved too much of my beautiful soap!
I ended up wasting lots of soaps and losing my temper! On top of that, the poor trimming performance, safety, and cleaning process were also a nightmare.
I even cut my fingers from time to time during trimming and cleaning!
To clean the whole unit, I needed to pull out the “tight” drawer to dump the trimmings, and then carefully wash it with a brush and a little water. To prevent the blade to get rusted from water, I used paper towels to dry it as soon as I cleaned the whole thing….
This frustration finally came to a happy end. Soon after I teamed up with my brother and his son, who have brilliant engineering minds, we invented the new tool that you are viewing right now!