Weighing wax - which weight, dry or melted?

[Scents and Warmers]

I am new to making my own scents and I just read the following on another site, "Did you weigh your FO and add it to the correct amount of MELTED wax? If you added 1 ounce of FO to 16 ounces (1 LB) of wax BEFORE it was melted, you have now added 1 ounce of FO to about 19 ounces of melted wax."

 

Is it normal protocol to judge your percentage of fo by the dry, unmelted weight? (ie. 16oz before melted) Or do you need to judge your percentage of fo based on the melted wax?? What would 16oz in 100% soy equal to in melted wax?? I think one of the reasons why some of my scents haven't been as strong as I'd like is because I'm judging fo percentage by the pre-melted weight. Am I doing this wrong?

[TallTayl]

Wax weighs the same out of the box, melted and in the candle. 

 

Looks like that other source is mixing volumetric (melted) with weighed (dry, out of the box). 

 

Always remain consistent with weight. Volumes vs weight changes with specific gravity of materials. Weights remain constant.

[Scents and Warmers]

That's what I thought and that would be the logical reasoning on it. However I've read even in this forum on another post, that the weight of melted wax  is more than the original dry, unmelted wax weight. Extremely contradictory. I guess I have a mission today to see if it's true or not on the weight difference. Thanks for you quick reply, I appreciate it. 

[mulberrysoap]

Which weights more a ton of feathers or a ton of bricks?  They both weight the same. 

[Scents and Warmers]

I am doing it correctly then. Thank you. When I read that on two different feeds on two different sites, I kinda went into panic mode, lol. I know there's a lot to learn, but that contradiction to logic just didn't seem right to me. 

[TallTayl]

I have a feeling the contradiction is that people quoting liquid measurements are using volume not weight. The specific gravity of wax is much lower than water (anywhere from 5-10% lower depending on the wax).

 

1 cup of water is 8 oz weight and volume. That is a specific gravity (density) of 1.00 at sea level. 

 

My soy wax has a specific density of about 0.92, so it is 8% less dense than water, meaning 1 cup (8 fluid ounxpces) of liquid melted wax weighs only about 7.3 oz. To get 8 weighed oz of melted wax I would need about 8.75 fluid ounces of melted wax. The different densities of wax make volume measurements VERY imprecise.

 

fragrances have different densities too, so volume measurements are less precise than weights. 

[Mrslile]

🙂 I am new too, and i have been wondering the same thing but what I notice. Is that I put 1.5oz of fo to every 1lb of soy wax.also make sure you read up on your waxes, each wax is different and if you need more help let me know.