After a little Internet research and a trip to the thrift store I made my own double boiler with a $5 crock pot, a tin can, some old nuts and some wire. Here it is in action melting some soap down for a pour
Here is the soap after it started to melt. It appears to me that soap is not very heat conductive. It takes a long time for fat soap chunks to melt. It seems to really help to have the soap shredded up before melting.
After the soap was melted I poured it into my mold. It is pretty viscous. This is very different from the paraffin wax I used before. That stuff was basically as runny as water when it was melted. This soap is more of a paste. After it cooled I noticed it had significantly less shrinkage than the wax as well. I did a little bit of experimentation with adding a sprue to my last mold, but it does not look necessary with the soap.
Here is a slightly cleaned up image of my first cast soap.
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