bealight20

So do you let the wax cool until it is solid and then reheat it to where it is just slushy and add fo? Or do you heat it up until the wax is clearly liquid again and then add the fo? Do you pour it right after or let it get to the slushy stage again?

Yeah the CO has helped with the frosting. So far I haven't had frosting in the scented ones with the CO but I have without it. I also got the wet spots without it, but that could be because of the climate. I don't color my candles either but I haven't been able to get over the frosting yet. I keep trying to hold onto this perfect candle idea but as I spend more and more time (and money) I realize I should probably let that go haha. I could live with a top that isn't completely smooth, but the craters are a different story.

OldGlory - I will try tempering the wax and hopefully that helps! I think you are right that the 2 pours might not work for the jar so I will try the whole batch. Would the wax lose any of the FO when I heat it back up??

ironrose - Do you get frosting on the sides of the jar or wetspots without the co in this mixture?? I had that trouble here in SD but if you are saying there is hope to go without it when I move to a warmer climate then I'd be really excited! haha.

I haven't tried covering with a box for a few months and the weather has changed quite a bit since then so I could definitely do that. I have been trying all kinds of different pour temps. It seems to happen less drastically when I pour cool but is still around. When I pour hot and in between it caves in everywhere.

I am cooling them on a wire rack and then I have tried without the CO but the entire jar either frosts or gets wetspots really bad. I think you might be on to something though because for some reason the unscented candle still frosts as if there wasn't any CO in it, while the scented ones have nicely adhered, non-frosted sides. Maybe the oil from the CO and the FO combined make it too oily? The tops don't seep or anything and they burn nicely, but just the tops while cooling are terrible...

Wax is 50/50 GB464 and Ecosoya CB 135 and the jar is the 4" 8oz apothecary jar.

Alright so I have finally narrowed my testing down to a wax type, a few wick sizes, and had myself thinking that I had a great system down. Of course, the testing isn't done though because something had to come up...

I had been testing wax pouring temps and wicks in unscented wax with the additives I was planning on using. These are coconut oil and UV. The unscented candle top came out beautiful! It was everything I had ever wanted.

Unfortunately, as soon as I added FO, major craters around the wick and around toward where the wax meets the glass keep happening with EVERY FO I pour.

Yesterday I poured 6 different scents and 1 unscented: every single scented candle had major holes and my unscented was still perfect....

I know that this sounds like a cooling issue but for the life of me I can't figure out what to change. I tried heating the containers, cranking up the heat in the apartment, and pouring at different ranges from right after adding FO down to the almost solid slushy stage (I for sure thought that one would work...)

It is very wintery over here in South Dakota and I am really hoping the cold outside has something to do with it, as I'll be moving to Cali in a week.

I was wondering if anyone else has had this problem or if this is just some weird situation.

Thank you guys for your tips! I am going to start trying them out tomorrow with my next pour

Omg that would be absolutely terrible! I don't want to do that haha.

I just tried heat gunning and it seems to have helped but I'll have to see how well they set up.

I think I'll try the eyeballing and see if I can get it pretty consistent.

Whenever I am pouring candles, I place the wicked jar on my scale and use the pour pot to pour the wax. When I go to move the jar to my cooling rack the wax always moves around and leaves residue above the pour line. This is driving me crazy!

I have tried both heating the jars (only get little dots of wax on the glass above the pour line when moving) pouring into room temperature jars (leaves an extremely uneven pour line from the movement).

Does anyone have any tips for how they weigh the wax for the individual candle and pour it without having to move it?

From the test pictures I posted before, the candles have just about finished being burned. The HTP wicked candles had a stronger scent throw (I'm not completely sure though because I have been smelling the same scent for months!) The flames did the job but looked really small pretty much throughout. For the CD wicks, the scent throw was a bit weaker (I think) but the flames looked a little better without being too hot.

Has anyone noticed this difference in hot throw or burn quality between the HTP and CD wicks?

Yup I have been using 2 HTP wicks or 2 CD wicks and both, if wicked to reach a fmp by the 4th or so burn, have no mushrooming whatsoever. I am almost to the bottom of these candles and have not trimmed the wick once. When I extinguish the flame The wick looks the same as when I lit the candle. I don't even think that they could be trimmed if I wanted to because they end up the correct size from burning. I don't want to open up any legal issues but I also don't want to advise people on my labels to do something that actually will end up compromising the quality of the candle.

Is the general consensus that it is or is not alright to leave out the wick trimming note?? When I tried wicking so that the fmp wasn't reached until the 4th or so burn when the candle was untrimmed, the flame never once got out of hand or popped or anything. Is it then ok to eventually market the candle as self-trimming and to advise to only trim when needed?

What kind of wax are you guys using, if you don't mind me asking?

No way! I am very thankful for any advice! I have been at this constantly for the last 5 months, and when I say constant, I mean I am home all day doing this because I am an online college student. I have exhausted lots of combinations of waxes and wicks but haven't been able to find a candle that makes me say "wow." At this point I just would really like to arrive at something that does that. I'm hoping one of the two that are pictured end up working out because I am just about out of options.

I went and looked at the wicks and I do see what you are talking about! I will definitely try that and that might help with the uneven burn.

Rjdaines - I also tried the ECO2s and ECO4s. They, oddly enough, also burned very similarly.

And I unfortunately started out with these apothecaries because I liked the look of them, so now I have a bunch of them around. Little did I know that they would be so tricky to wick haha.

In the picture is the deepest part of the mp. The back portion of the candle is just starting to reach the outside so it hasn't started going down back there. I am crossing my fingers that it doesn't get too hot in the next few burns because those are the smallest CDs I have haha.

I do also have some HTPs going. The 2 HTP 62s (in the picture below) seem like they would be similar to going down to 2 CD4s. There is a fmp on one side and a bit more hangup on the other side. This one has been burning for the same length as the previous one, so it is on hour 3 of the 3rd 4 hour burn. I filled the jars just below where they start to curve. That ends up being 9 oz in weight. My tester friends were commenting that they thought it looked like I had underfilled them when I would only do the 8 oz.

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This is how the 2 CD5's look halfway through the 3rd 4 hour burn. At the end of the 2nd burn the mp had just barely reached the sides of the glass. So it is just now starting to have some depth instead of just moving out. Are the flames an ok size? Too small?

Ok yeah I figured it might get to hot later on if it was happening this fast.

When you use such small wicks to double wick a 4" candle jar does it look funny that the flames are so small?? Or is that something that just goes along with the double wick? I am just used to seeing the larger single-wicked flame so it looked odd to me when I was burning my testers.

When double wicking a candle, should you reach the fmp twice as fast since you are using two wicks? I am using a 8 oz apothecary jar (3 7/8" diameter) and am playing around with double wicking. I tried searching for an answer but couldn't find one. I know that you should usually reach a fmp on about the 3rd burn but when I tried 2 of the ECO 2's I reached a fmp on the first burn at about 2 hours. Coming from predominately single-wicking, that seems a little fast to me, but I'm not entirely sure what the norm is.

Does anyone know when a fmp should be realized in one of these containers when double wicked?

I guess that my question is does anyone have a wick that they can achieve a strong scent throw with little mushrooming? Is this possible to have both? Or, is this expectation of finding the perfect wick that does both unrealistic?

It is interesting because I have tried just about every combination I could think of to blend between the 3 waxes, beeswax, coconut oil, and usa and, ironically enough, the best looking and fastest curing candles turned out to be with the blended waxes and no additives. Of course that was the last one I tried... but it still worked out pretty well.

I have tested both ways but just was starting to test without trimming since my testers weren't trimming wicks. I am trying to find out if it would work out without trimming. But the mushrooming was happening before when I did trim. Not as bad though.

I have only bought the CD from BCN and the CDN from southwest. Do you know of other suppliers for them?