Dustpuuppy

You may be thinking of "naval jelly". You can get it at auto parts stores, too. A penetrating oil might work better than WD40. Liquid Wrench is one. It's slightly different than WD40. Seems to work a bit better on rust. Any residue can be gotten out with mold cleaner followed by pouring a throwaway candle, using leftover wax or whatever. If its just 'surface rust', you might not get the pitting someone else mentioned. If you DO get the pitting, you might be able to smoth it out a bit with some steel wool from the paint store. Not S.O.S pads. Kitchen steel wool pads are too course. The steel wool probably won't work, but if you want to try and since the mold is arleady only good for rustics at that point, anyway...

You should figure out what kind of candles you want to make, then pick up a starter kit. None of the books I've seen are very helpful, from what I've seen. If you know whether you want to start with pillars, votives or containers, you can go back through this board and the archives. You'll be able to get a good idea of which threads to read, from the titles. There's more info here, than in all the books I've seen, combined. Thing is, that most of what you read won't make a lot of sense, until you start pouring wax. A lot of things that seem totally confusing will become almost painfully obvious, when you make a couple of candles.

Soap always looked complicated to me.:smiley2: I'd suggest you start out with something simple, rather than bee's wax. It has a reputation for being hard to get along with. I'd suggest getting a container starter kit. Even if you don't want to do parafin, it's a good way to learn the basics. Peak has some of the best kits I've seen, but there are some around that can be had for less money.

Upon reflection... I'm thinking that it might not be a bad idea to make some bad candles, which you could use as examples.

I know that a few people have mentioned using the griddles and electric fry pans for leveling. I use the Presto for raw wax, mix in all my additives, like stearin, then ad scent and color in the pour pots. Still do the double boiler thing to keep the pour pots up to temp while I'm playing around with the color and FO.

I think Tanya tried it once. Remember those big fires they had in California a few years back ?

Try running a search in the old board ( The Archives). A couple of people posted all the details, there. I think there were two or three different people who posted a lot of info with pics and maybe some diagrams.

I think Astorlite dealers have some free samples. Seems like you had to go to the Astor wax homepage and make a request then get it from the nearest dealer. Something like that.

I've used cone shaped coffee filters a couple of times. I gave up on doing this because it's too much like work and you burn off a good bit of the FO in the process, so it didn't seem to be much of a savings, to me. Your mileage may vary.

I have what I refer to as my 'test rig'. I put my test candle in a pyrex bowl, then sit that inside of a cheap metal stock pot. If it were me, I'd rig up something similar to test these with. My guess is that the canning jar is going to fail from the heat and dump very hot wax all over the place. That's just an educated guess, and it's more guess than education. I may be proven wrong, but bees wax inside of glass is a bit scary, even to me. I'd test several, before trying to sell them. I'd especially make sure to burn a couple all the way down, in one burn, without trimming the wick. Some idiot will do it at home. Said idiot will then try to sue you, if the glass explodes. If you're selling, you have to assume that all your' customers are total morons who are unwilling or unable to follow the most basic safety precautions. I know that sounds harsh, but it beats losing your home in a lawsuit.

Bee's wax burns a lot hotter than parafin. I think it's melt point is up around 180. Normal pillar blends melt at around 160 and the most common container blends at have about 130 melt points. The problem is; what kind of container are you going to use that will safely handle all that heat ? My guess is that Pyrex glass would be all that would handle it and that would be expensive. I'm not sure I'd trust even that, for something I was going to sale. If you just want your candles to be 'natural', I'd suggest some of the soy/veggie waxes. Your question was, can this be done. It can be done. I'm just not sure it should be, though.

It's easy to get those things off by just a bit. I gave up trying to get it exact, after I came up a tad short, a couple of times. Someone wants three candles and one is just a little shorter than the other two... it looks kinda amatuerish to me. That's one reason I always make a bit extra and store it away. Better too much than not enough, but that's just me.

Oddly enough, I've sold quite a few, the past few weeks. Just stuff I've had laying there for the past few months. That's part of what prompted me to get back on this board. It's odd how things happen, sometimes.

Try the clay section of your local hobby or art store. The people I've seen do carving have generally just use one of those looped knives and a paring knife, but whatever your video shows, you should be able to find something pretty close. For $30 you should be able to walk out with a nice assortment. You might want to PM Bruce, as well.

If my candle operation got any smaller, it'd implode. I learned this stuff from working in other fields.

For the actual carving, you can use the same tools that you use for carving clay. You only need a couple and a paring knife to make pretty much any type of cut you want. The expensive part is the dipping vats. I was going to pick up a used resturaunt steam table and use either some deep pans or pour pots for the individual colors. Not exactly what you asked, just thrownig out ideas, since you sound like you don't want to spend a lot on this.

Well, trying to think from the manufacturer's POV; the UV inhibitor would raise the cost of the wax by a few cents per pound. A lot of folks won't want to pay tha extra cost, when they don't want the inhibitor. You have to keep in mind that most of us are just small fry. $1 per case of wax extra might not affect us but the large, mass producers who buy 1000 cases at a time are gonna shave every cent of cost they can. The manufacturer of the wax would then have to make two seperate blends, or lose sales to thier competition. Just like most of us limit our scent list to what we know we can sell. We can't stock 100 scents in 10 sizes/shapes just in case one person wants this scent or that. We're crafters, so we don't have to think so much about spending an extra penny per candle but if you're trying to wholesale to Wal-Mart, or supplying those that do, you have to think of these things.:smiley2:

As for the wax, no blend would please everyone. Not everyone uses a UV inhibitor. If you were the manufacturer, you'd want the preblend wax to fit the largest number of people possible. You can add UV inhibitor, or a bit of stearin, or whatever, but you couldn't take them out, if you didn't want them. As for the wicks, I haven't a clue.

I'd try to make my name as different as possible from anyone else's. Try to get the first word different from anyone else's, at least. People will get the first word or first few letters right, when typing them in, they tend to get sloppy after that. If your name was something close to the name of a farm equipment dealer, it wouldn't be a big issue... but another chandler... Someone types in .com, instead of .net; they buy from them, thinking they're buying from you... you've done the advertising, they got the sale... and if thier stuff is sub-standard, you get the bad reputation.

As a rule of thumb, just about any type of industrial equipment will sell for around half of the new price. At $250, this is about 1/3, and it's not a *lot* of money. I'd get the model number and manufacturer, then check on the price for new heating elements, along with checking the availability of any other parts, just in case. Scratches and gouges could be an issue, as someone else stated, but if you're only gonna use one wax formula, it wouldn't HAVE to be an issue except cleaning it for the first time. You might have to waste #10 of wax to 'rinse' it, that first time. I'd jump on it, if I could and I needed one that big... if I knew I could still get parts, if needed.

I've had the best luck at Hobby Lobby. The one here has a whole aisle of cookie cutters. Metal, plastic... every size and shape I've needed so far.

Hobby Lobby and Micheal's generally has a good assortment. Some Wal-Marts do, too. A lot of department stores have them in the kitchenware dept. Sometimes the supermarket will have a few. Even the local dollar store will sometimes have some. A baking specialty store might have some that you can't find elsewhere, but they'll probably cost twice as much. I'm not real careful with them, sometimes, so if I find a really unusual one that I like, I buy 2 or 3 and put the extras away. I think the most expensive one I've bought was about $2.50. There's nothing special about the ones you use for candles, just a standar cookie cutter. You can also trace a shape onto your chunk wax and cut it out with an exacto knife. If you're handy and a bit patient you can make one out of the metal banding they use when shipping pallets. Just bend it into the shape you want, then solder it. You'd prolly need a vise, some vice grip pliers and tin snips. That's a lot of work for something you can get really cheap at the store, but if it's something you can't live without and can't find anywhere...

O.K. In that case, I'd guess that you either misread the scale, or didnt set the tare weight properly, for whatever you were putting the wax into to weigh it. Setting the tare weight is easy to screw up on. I always make more than I need, so I always have extra. I got a mini muffin pan and pour up the extra. I can then use those for fragrance samples, and as a color reference to make sure I get the color to match, the next time I run a batch of those. I also give some of them to a few people to use as melts.

Don't feel bad. One night I turned off the presto pot and went out to dinner. Came back to find that I'd turned the knob the wrong way and I had something like 4 Lbs of wax simmering at 400 degrees. I'd turned the knob the wrong direction.:undecided

You don't HAVE to cool the molds between pours, it just makes the process more forgiving, if you do. The folks that do layered rustics every day know exactly how hot the wax wax needs to be in order to get the rustic effect AND get good layer adhesion. Cooling the mold will let you pour a bit hotter... gives you a bit more wriggle room , with the pour temp. I'd chill the molds, simply because I don't do enough of those to have it down pat.