Try it in a hot shower rather than at the sink when you retest. Hard water at the sink makes almost any handmade bar feel worse than it is, and if your water is very hard that's a variable worth knowing about.
Two year olds do take a break, but not usually all four at once and not usually in the middle of the season. Second the hidden nest theory.
If it does come out unusable, you can rebatch — grate it, add a little liquid, melt gently, press into a mould. Rustic result but nothing wasted. Only do this if the bars genuinely fail, though, not for cosmetic ugliness.
Hadn't thought about line of sight. They're about a metre apart on the same wall.
Once fixed, avoid long simmers of anything acidic in it for the first few months — tomato sauces will strip a young wok seasoning quickly. Stir fries and searing only for a while.
Do plane rather than steam if you want a really clean face — a vegetable peeler or a soap planer takes off a paper-thin layer and gives a matte finish. Steam can leave a slightly glossy patch on some recipes.
Six birds in 24 square feet is on the tight side too, particularly if they're shut in during bad weather. Not the cause of the drip but it's making everything worse.
After restoring, cook bacon in it half a dozen times before you try anything delicate. Nothing builds early seasoning like fatty meat over medium heat, and it's much more forgiving than eggs while the surface is still young.
Weigh one bar now and weigh it again in two weeks. When the weight stops dropping, the cure is done. It's the only real measurement in this whole process and it removes the guesswork entirely.
Cheap addition either way — automatic pop hole door on a light sensor. Removes the human error part, which is honestly where most flocks get lost.
Silicone for your volume, easily. One batch a month means the wooden mould's advantages — cheaper at scale, better insulation, more sizes — barely come into play, while its disadvantage of relining every batch shows up every single time.
The one real caveat: silicone insulates poorly, so the sides of the loaf cool fast and you get partial gel, which shows as a lighter ring around a darker centre. Fix is to sit the silicone mould inside a cardboard box with a towel over it for the first 12 hours. That's the whole trick and it costs nothing.
It is. Either insulate fully and get a complete gel, or deliberately refrigerate and get no gel at all. The ugly outcome is the in-between.