dipped

I do not have a web site. I sell to churches and a few religious stores. I do not want to deal with selling to the public, but I’m sure I could make a lot more money if I did. This lady has a sweet frame system and would be the bomb from what I can tell if she switched up the candle dipping head to something that you can switch out. I learned how to make candles in an old school church candle shop. They had 20 dipping heads and you worked with 10 at a time. You would take each head off the rack dip and then hang back up. As you dipped on set you would let the other set hang to harden up all the way. I up dated a bit. I use a 10” dipping frame that holds 16 pair of candles. If it's a .5” candle I will not take them off the frame part way though. When I’m doing the .75” candles I take them off the frames after about 8 dips and put them on a set of racks that just have the top ring to save weight. The thing I hate is cleaning the wax off the old racks and cleaning the wick ends out of the old wax.

The red and blue candles are prayer candles. Very few religions use colored candles in there services and mostly for special occasions. With the right setup dipping 9,000 12” by '.75 candles in 24 hours is not that bad. Once you get in a zone you just work. My wife and my mother both work with me from time to time.

Every 2 months I make a 500 mile road trip to hand deliver my candles to different churches. Even with wooden crates you can still have a lot of issues with sending large candles. My temp controlled box truck is a life saver. Each religion has a different standard on how there candles are to be made. Very few religious candle makers know what most of the standards are. I think it's best if I do not finish this paragraph. I buy between 120,000 and 200,000 pounds of beeswax a year. Most of the time the cost of the wax is set months before they even start to process the wax and the amount of wax that your buying is just a wild guess until after the honey harvest. Yes the cost of some of the candles is horrendous. Some of our candles are about 27 pounds. Bees wax is about $13.00 a pound. Candles that large have to be made by spinning the wick and pouring wax over it. If you send a box over 50 pounds or 4' long most shipping companies charge you for a drivers helper on each box. Well it's time to get back to dipping red candles. I need to get about 9,000 done today so switch over to blue tomorrow.

No I do not have a web site. With doing 90%, 95%, and pure beeswax it's very hard to ship without issues. I make everything from .5” x 6” tapers to 4” by 5' alter candles. I mostly wholesale to churches and 5 religious stores around us. I get at least 3 different churches call me a week that want me to supply them on the east coast. I did find a farmer that has 2 tons of capping wax and 8 tons of yellow wax. Now to work out the details...

Yes I talked to a couple of processors and there larger resellers. The info I got from the processors is there is still a good size stock pile of USA product out there. At the point you spend the money on shipping for a couple pallets you might as well pay for shipping on a full truck load. Right now I’m working on a new contract and if I take it I will not make it to the spring harvest with the amount of capping wax I currently have. They will let me lock in my prices in early spring for the new harvest, but will not sell what they have on hand. If I get the new contract my wife is going to quite her job and work with me making candles.

It's very hard to talk to bees. I buy out 6 to 10 bee farmers summer and fall every year, but my stock pile is running low. I bought out 8 large farmers in the fall, but there numbers were not as high as everyone planed.

I called a few wholesalers this week looking to buy 10,000 to 20,000 pounds of unbleached capping beeswax by the pallet. I also wanted to fill the rest of the truck with comb beeswax (yellow). Looking for a total buy of around 38,000 to 40,000 pounds. Every company that I called or emailed thought I was joking. No one wanted to make a sale. Yes I know were looking at a $201,000 to $300,000 order shipped to my door and most likely would leave them low on beeswax till early summer. The place I get my wicks from wanted me to email my business info with my request and would be passed on to there sales manager. I buy a few thousand in wicks from them every year and did buy a truckload of wax from them 2 years ago so I did not think they would take it as a joke. I got en email back from the sales manager that took my request as a joke. I wrote her back on Wednesday with a list of invoice numbers from the last 5 years, what I bought, and how much I spent. Still no response by close of Friday.

I love jacketed meters and have 2 of them. At the end of the day I load both of the meters and set the timer for what time I want them to turn on. When I get to my shop the wax is hot and I'm ready to work. I don't like to keep large amounts of wax hot 24/7. I have a 300 pound melter that I only use for plain wax and a 150 pound melter I use for color mixing. Make sure you find the chart on how long it takes to bring your wax up to temp with the wattage / poundage of the model you get. I do hand dipped or spin and poor candles. My dip vat holds 100 pounds of wax and have to top it off every 5 minutes through the day. I can dip or spin and poor 100+ pounds of wax an hour if my wife is helping out. I plan on buying a 300 pound melter in the next few months. The element cost for my 2 melters are under $30 each and take me about 20 minutes to replace. If you use distilled or RODI water there is very little maintenance and elements last me about 5 years each. I have a direct heat melter that needs to be sent back to the factory to be fixed. I'm looking at $700 for shipping and about $200 to get it fixed. From the day I send it out to the day it comes back is about 45 days. No thanks.