strugglebrother

The issues with the melter persists, it's painfully slow to heat up wax in. It's not the melter they advertise it to be in my opinion. But it works when the wax is melted. Anyway, it works fine to blend the fragrance in it. I make sure to wipe it after with paper towels and if I really want to clean it from time to time I tilt it completely on the side and heatgun the sides and then wipe with rubbing alcohol after. If there is a little left, it will not be enough to scent the next batch. I use dye in it too, works just fine so you should be good. It's a time saver to have it scented in the melter. Good luck!

Why aren't you using paraffin or palm wax? Soy and other brittle natural waxes will never work? What's your aim?

I actually use a bit of Blue Spruce in a blend, I thought they didn't have the nerve to actually touch one of their all time bestsellers.. All of their other scents I have completely given up on last year. In what way did Blue Spruce change? It started with their change in Golden Brand waxes, it got worse when they tried to cater to soaping with their candle fragrances and the big nail in the coffin was the "clean scent" strategy plus only carrying two wick series (I'm not even counting LX as a decent wick tbh). I could also mention their drama with their white and black straight sided tumblers that was going on for about a year or two.

It's a tough market out there now, especially when many homemakers outdoor markets closed due to Covid. A huge client base of Candlescience stopped buying materials for probably 6 months. Candlescience needs to survive and you survive with marketing tricks. How to stand out against their other competition? My bet is that reformulations needed to be done to cut costs, then this idea came to place with the clean scents along with it. People hate reformulations as it breaks their long tested formulas, so you need an excuse and a good one that people can't argue with. Maybe they removed some bad stuff, who knows until you run their scents through a lab test. I would still not drink them and I would just not take their word for it.
 Look how they phrase their press release with instructions to their customers and advice like this "Look carefully at the SDS sheets provided by the fragrance manufacturer or supplier. Are they all the same? If so, take caution. Suppliers are required to do this work and do it correctly. If you come across this, we encourage you to ask your supplier more questions before purchasing." I'm always sceptical when you have to downplay your competitors like this, if your product is good enough you shouldn't have to. These days companies have to pretend that they run a charity business when in reality they don't. Press releases with statements become more important than the actual product, and in reality, there is still very little transparency. Not saying that good intentions might be there for some but maybe I'm just old and jaded as I have seen it so many times now .

I had the best throw with CD and ECO wicks but they both suicided themselves at the end of the candle. I spoke directly to Calwax about it and they had the best results with CD wicks all around so I started there and thought I move over to HTP and ECO as they are kind of similar, at least HTP. HTP didn't give me sufficient throw, could be container and FO combo also. I need to test more, I like the wax somehow but got stuck and then other things came in between. Feel free to DM me if you find anything and I can test the same here too!

We had great hot throw with 6-8% fragrance load in this wax when we tested a few fragrances. The problem we had was that the wicks at the end of the candle self-trimmed so much that they die at the last 20% of the candle. Has anyone else had this problem? To prevent this we tried CDN wicks but they didn't give as much throw as we wanted.

Very good summary of this... One more great reason to buy straight from the fragrance houses... Oil is freshly made to order, it doesn't sit on a shelf for possibly up to a year.... Oil is exactly the same as it was, fragrance houses do not reformulate without being instructed to do so from their customers.. Only retailers do that, and they do it frequently and they discontinue Downside, you have to buy in 25/lb quantities. Bad restaurants serve 50 mediocre dishes... Good ones serve 7-10 excellent ones

Yes, I spoke to the owner Joe Blythe this morning. They will be taking over all of Precision Wicking's inventory of wicks, machines, tabs and priming wax. Wickit will continue to have 3,000 as a minimum order. Very happy to hear this as we ordered from Precision and they had some wicks that Wicks Unlimited doesn't carry. Wicks Unlimited has 10,000 as a minimum order, I have tried to work with them on smaller orders than that but they will not fulfil less than that. Wicks Unlimited do have a great team and I love working with them, sometimes we can order 10,000, but not always.

@MilosCandles A full pallet is usually 40 cases so that should bring your shipping down to $15 per case. If you only buy 9 cases the pallet shipping might not give you the best shipping price. If you are able to buy one pallet per year instead of 4 shipments a year you should save some money. And you know that you have consistent wax for a full year. Another factor is where you are buying from, sometimes its actually cheaper to have one pallet shipped across the whole country than buying from a distributor with a higher price closer to you. It's a bit of a email and phone game to try and find where to buy from. IGI's main west coast distributor, which is closer to me, is more expensive than shipping a pallet from the IGI east coast distributor across the country. Call the distributor you are buying from and ask them if they can tailor a freight quote for you, sometimes those calculators they use on the website doesn't give you the correct / best price. Remember that shops like Candlescience, Bulk Apothecary etc, those shops are not ment for serious candle makers who want to make a living on making candles, they are ment to work as a starting point and for hobbyists. You deal with highly inflated prices, watered down fragrance oils, inconsistent supply and higher shipping prices. When you can start moving away from them your profit will increase. What wax are you buying, from what store and where do you live?

CSN7 wicks now popped up at CS again... CDN and CSN isn't the same wick. I would grab so you have for another year and start testing in the meantime, otherwise you can always order from the UK (they also stock CSN11).

Stock of CSN9 have popped up again at CS, grab what you can.....

I just grabbed a thousand CSN7... But I need CSN9, will have to get bigger amount from one of the main manufacturers.... Would have been nice with a warning CS, let your good old clients who poured money into your register for years be able to stock up before you pull everything. CSN is not available from anywhere else if they don't drop that US license and let others sell it in quantities under 5000. Are they closing shop? Their main focus is candles and they only stock 3 wick series?

C&S Easybeads is the same as Coco83 in beads form, Accu Blend makes this wax (it isn't vegan) C&S Coconut Slab Wax is made by CalWax (if I remember right this has paraffin + soy in it and is vegan) 
 Calwax and AccuBlend are competing with their own different blends of coconut waxes, they aren't helping each other with distribution. Calwax uses the brand name Ceda-Serica to promote their hybrid waxes. Accu-Blend Coco83 have changed formula several times, many reports about it on this forum. More info about the two blends here:

Yes, feel free to PM me if you want any info!

Yeah that sounds like a huge recall... I have been to Modern Candle previously, yeah they are a big private label manufacturer here in Los Angeles. Interesting and thanks for the link.