Forrest

We have a scale at NASA that can weigh more than you'll ever need to 0.001g. I used to get weighed on it every day. They were doing a test on the system we developed for space station that takes the moisture out of the air, the waste water, and urine and turns it into drinking water. They would weigh us and then we would go inside a mock up of a space station module and walk on a treadmill. They would weigh us again when we were finished so that they knew precisely how much sweat we has lost. There is no better motivation for dieting than to be weighed daily to 0.001g. I suspect that one cost a lot of $.

Right now my customers are my two grown children and my sisters in law, and I can't teach them anything.

Why do you need such precision? 0.005g is awful precise. My main scale only goes to 1g and the one I measure my FOs on goes to 0.1.

The whole package is amazing; it draws people in and makes it fun to buy a candle; that’s why they have FOMO. Heck, I’d probably buy one if I were there and that’s the last thing I need. You obviously know your customers, and what it takes to keep them coming back.

Now that is an amazing marketing strategy! I am impressed.

I can tell you what the worst container is; that would be a tureen, you have to be insane to use those. I would recommend a round, glass container with straight sides. Based on my experience and the recommendations I have gathered from this board I would recommend CD or Zinc core wicks. I recently tested the 8oz tin with 6006 and the CD-8 worked best in my test. The 51 zinc core also worked but is a bit hotter than the CD-8.

There is a lot of 50 CD-7s on ebay for $7.50 with free shipping.

Well this is about more than I can take. I’m testing 8oz tins and two of the wicks I’m testing are CD6 and CD8, and the CD6 had a consistently bigger melt pool than the CD8. I wanted to make some fall/holiday candles in tins but now I don’t know if I should wick up or down. I think I'll make some more and with some with bigger wicks and test them in the bedroom with the window unit on. I just love making candles.

I'm about 4 hours from you in Huntsville Alabama, but next weekend I'll be checking out your candles in the shops in Blue Ridge. My wife and and I are meeting my daughter and son in law for a weekend getaway.

Must be cooler up in Cherry Log than it is down here. I checked and average room temperature is 72, if we go with that we should be OK.

I think you have to assume some average room temperature and make your candles for that. I don't know what else you could do. My problem is I tested at 80 degrees so I'll need to retest when the weather cools. Most people don't vary the temperature in their houses as much as I do. You probably burn your candles year round and if you don't see a problem then I wouldn't worry about it. Yankee Candles are in the same boat as we are and I bet they don't vary their wicks.

So which one has the better hot throw? I need another good fall scent.

I'll give it a shot; do your testing in the spring and fall when the weather is mild, and you may want to consider up wicking your holiday candles. I guessing TT would tell you that your perfectly wicked candle is good for a temperature range of about 5 degrees above or below where it was tested; anything beyond that you need to retest. Or perhaps the moral is, stay cool in the summer and warm in the winter and your candles will always burn well.

True, and the plus side to all this is that even though the tealight size wick were too much for double wicking my 11oz tureen last week I bet I can make it work in January when my house is 65 degrees.

I did a little research and this is what I found, I’m referring to burn and not HT here. Surprisingly dry air conducts heat better than moist air. This means in a humid environment more heat from the flame is going to transfer to the wax, so you get a bigger melt pool. I can’t say how much difference this makes, but proper wicking of a candle is walking a fine line so I suspect it makes more difference to candle making than to other applications.

I'm in North Alabama, but our humidity has been awful this summer, we usually get a break from time to time, but not so far this year. I grew up in Florida so I do know humidity. From my limited training in thermodynamics I can see why heat affects the burn so much. The melting process absorbs energy and we are trying to size our wicks so that we are putting just enough heat into the candle to make a good melt pool. If the wax is warmer to start with it takes less heat to melt is. The humidity thing will be hard to test, but I'm going to try.

My guess is that all of our wicks are dry within seconds of lighting the candle. The heat thing is simply that the warmer the wax the less energy it takes to melt. Try putting a candle in the refrigerator over night and then light it. It will burn like it is vastly under wicked until the wax gets to room temperature. I'm guessing you have better HT due to the low humidity, but that is just a guess, but I'm working on a test for that theory.

In your experience do you think the humidity has a significant effect on the burn, or is it primarily the heat? Here in the deep south there is no such thing as hot and dry, buy my thinking is that the melting of wax is primarily a function of heat. Of course most things I think about candles turn out to be wrong so why would this time be different?

I started this a year and a half ago because I thought it was going to be easy, I stayed with it because it was hard and my brain needed a challenge and I doubt there is a better one out there.

Yes it is! I have some 4oz tins I'm going to fill and use to test temperature and humidity effects, I may even test some 4630 and 464 to see which wax is least susceptible to environmental conditions . One day I might even make some candles that aren't for testing.

I’ve see many comments about the effects of a warm environment on candles lately, so I decided to run a test and see for myself what those were. So I made two 8oz tins with 51 zinc core wicks and 6006 wax. I cured them for two week and then ran my test. I put one in my garage and kept the other one inside. I would guess the temperature difference was about 8-10 degrees. After one hour the melt pool on the inside candle was 2.0 inches and the outsides’ was 2.4 inches. At two hours the inside was at 2.3 in and the outside had a FMP. The inside candle reached a FMP at 3 hours, but it was not nearly as deep as that of the outside candle. I got similar results on days two and three. My best guess is that I would need to down wick two sizes to get a good burn on the outside candle. The humidity in the garage was also much higher, but I don’t know if that would have affected the burn. I may devise a test for that later. The problem I’m seeing is that all of my recent wick testing is only valid if the candles I make are burned in a room that is within a few degrees of the temperature the test was done at. The difference between my house for the current test and my house during the winter is at least 15 degrees. Based on this test a candle that was properly wicked for my house today would be very under wicked in December. Of course this is only one test and more testing is needed. I’m going to try and come up with some other test to see what I can learn about this. I would hate to have to put burn at temperature labels on my candles.

I have a journal that I started and have been writing down a hodgepodge of information related to candle making. A few months back I started keeping a separate test journal based on information I read on the candle making board and that has been a huge help. So now I’m getting new FOs in and testing them, making various blends and it has become a disorganized mess. So I’ve decided to start a FO journal. I’m looking for advice on how to organize it and what information I need to keep track of. I have a journal I could write in, or I could make a page in Word to be a sort of fill in the blanks for each FO. I’m not sure what to do, but I have to do something soon.

Well that has to be balanced against good tasting beer.

These days beer cans are coated with polymer lining made with BPA. I would want to know what gasses it might put off when heated before I put a candle in it. Vintage cans wouldn't have that problem.

Thanks, today I'm testing a CD6, CD8, and a 51 Zinc that I poured two weeks ago with 6006 and no FO.