The fair is November 14. What's the last day you can pour?
Pick a preset or set your own cure days, then count forward from a make date or backward from the event date. Everything stays in your browser.
The line
The dates
The numbers here are yours to check. This page does arithmetic on what you type — it cannot see your recipe, your equipment or your batch.
Want it to remember?
In MadeKeeper, every batch you log carries its ready-by date and every event gets a sellable-that-day view, so the curing racks and the fair calendar finally talk to each other. See for soap & candle makers or poke around the live demo. $19/mo for the whole back office, kept for as long as you stay. The shop stays free for cost a piece and one fair — no product cap. The tax packet, Etsy and Square, and more fairs are the $19.
Free calculator — soap & candle makers
The presets here are community conventions, not lab constants — every one is argued somewhere, and every one is yours to change. Here's the folk math behind them.
How long does cold process soap cure before it's ready to sell?
The community convention for cold process is four to six weeks, and makers argue every week of that range — which is exactly why it's a setting here, not a constant. The calculator defaults to 28 days, hot process presets at 14, and castile is its own animal: months, not weeks, so its preset is 180 days. Your recipe, your water discount, and your climate all move the number, so set it per line — the answer always tells you which duration it used.
Which direction does the calculator count?
Both, and it's the same arithmetic either way. Forward: make date plus cure days equals your ready-by date, so a batch poured September 17 at 28 days is ready October 15. Backward: event date minus cure days equals the last make date that still has product on the table, so a November 14 fair at 28 days means October 17 is your last pour. The math crosses month boundaries honestly, which is where the wall calendar and masking tape can slip.
How long do soy candles cure before the scent throw settles?
Candle makers talk in days, not months — the common convention for soy runs about one to two weeks depending on the wax, so the preset here is 10 days, with paraffin at 3. Cure in candles is a scent-throw thing: the wax and fragrance finish binding, and every wax blend argues its own number. That's why it's a field you set — your test burns on your wax are the real answer, and the calculator just does the dates.
Is it okay to sell soap before the full cure?
That's not a question this calculator will answer, in either direction. The durations here are quality conventions — the case makers argue for a longer cure is a harder bar, better lather, and steadier scent — and we won't draw a safety line for you one way or the other. What's right for your product comes down to your own tested process and the documentation from your suppliers and authorities, and those beat any date field.