Forrest

I see high end candles with adhesion issues all the time

Welcome to the club

When testing the first thing I look for is how long it takes to get a full melt pool, generally speaking I want to be close to a FMP on the at the end of the second three hour burn. If I get a FMP before then I’ll try a smaller wick. The rule of thumb I go by is I try to use the smallest wick that will eventually melt all the wax. If a wick is too big you tend to get more mushrooming, smoking, and soot and a properly wicked candle. If a candle is over wicked you tend to have a bigger flame. For me wicking is the hardest thing about candle making. I use 5 different types of wicks. If you are unsure of your wicking a good thing to do is do a test burn and post pictures on this board. The experts will give you advice.

You may me getting lucky. I wicked 8oz tins with 19 different FO at 7% and there was a large variation in wick sizes.

I suspect everything is FO specific, but I’m very suspicious. I’m pretty sure a properly wicked 7% candle will always have better HT that a poorly wicked 9% one. There is also the possibility that I incorrectly recorded the wick size; I’ll double check that this weekend. What I also know is that, because the wicks are different, you can’t be certain that increasing the FO% is the reason the HT is better, assuming it is. All in all I’ve given up on certainty and taken to wandering around the house mumbling to myself. What I plan to do is make eight 7% candles with the wicks I’ve already picked and two at 9% with no wick. After three months cure time I’ll wick the 9% candles and do a subjective assessment of the difference. I’ll do that for four or five FOs and see if there is a pattern. If there is I’ll adjust my level of uncertainty accordingly. Sigh, I did so want candle making to be an exact science.

That will take a few months

I suspect you are right, but sometimes more HT is a good thing, and other times it isn’t. But testing is just my nature and my recent project hasn’t allowed me much opportunity to test things. It is time for me to make all my spring and summer candles and this allows me to slip a little testing in. I have a couple of FOs that I would like to get a bit more HT out of and this may be the answer. I’ve stopped buying new FO so I’ve got to make the ones I’m using work.

Like many people when I first started I used 10% FO because that’s what it said my wax could hold. That led to a lot of problems with smoking and mushrooming. Dropping down to 7% solved many of those problems. A while back I did wick testing for 18 FOs in 8oz tins with 6006 at 7% and selected wicks that I thought would be good after several months curing. One FO that gave me problems was Flaming’s Falling Leaves, but I settled on a WI740. However when I made the candles I miscalculated the FO and ended up with something around 9%. After four months curing my WI740 didn’t work at 9%. I tried several wicks I ended up with a 44 zinc core, which is seven wicks higher on my wick list. The thing is that when I tested this I had no smoking or mushrooming problems. This got me to wondering if a long cure time would allow a higher FO percentage without wicking issues, and would the higher FO percentage lead to better HT in well cured wax. So the in my next batch of candles I’m going put this to the test by making a few unwicked candles at 9%, and the rest at7%. Once they have a few months to cure I’ll test them and see what the difference is. I realize this has no meaning for someone looking to sell candles, but for amateurs like myself it could be important. One reason I think there may be something here is that one of my first soy candles that cured for a year burned perfectly and had the strongest HT of any candle I have ever seen. Since that experience I have had a theory that soy candles will have better HT than paraffin candles if they are cured long enough. Given the problems with soy I’m not sure I want to test that theory.

The thing is I think I found out, and it was a pretty big jump in wick size. I really should learn to write things down, and double check all my calculations.

Let’s say I accidentally added too much FO and ended up at 9% instead 0f the 7% my test candles had. How big a difference would that make in my wicking?

No, you can tell a big difference in the HT with longer cure times, and but you also need a bigger wick. The one I just tested was overwicked after two weeks cure, but now it needs at least one size bigger, maybe two. I've turned off the AC, but it is about the same temp in my house as when I tested them the first time.

Yes it does. It is only 30% soy so you wouldn't expect it to need soy like cure times, but it does.

I usually use my little heat gun after a wickectomy to get a smooth surface, if I had several candles I’d break out the big heat gun. But generally speaking a perfect surface is not required on free candles.

I’ve started a project to make 6006 candles and give them long cure times. Back in June I make my fall/Christmas candles and I made enough of each to supply my family. This weekend I burned two of them. The first was perfectly wicked. The second may be a little under wicked, but I’ll need another burn or two to be sure. I wicked these candles based on them being over wicked at two weeks. If my best guess was wrong I’ll have to do w wickectomy and replace all the wicks. That got me to thinking, why not cure the candles without wicks? Then after four months I could wickectomy my best guess wick and do a proper wick test on them. When I got the wicking right I could add wicks to all of them. While that is potentially more work I could do it while I am watching TV, so it wouldn’t take up any useful time. I suspect people might think me a bit odd if they knew I had bags full of unwicked candles under the bed, but I’m OK with that. BTW the HT on the first two candles I tested was excellent.

Beware the sample size FOs, they are highly addictive

Best reason ever!

If I might make a recommendation based on painful experience, make candles with your 444 and put them away for several months. I made my Fall/Christmas candles using 6006 back in early June. I made my first candles with 464 and they had almost no HT, I eventually gave up and went to 6006, about a year later I found one of those first candles and it had the best HT of any candle I have ever burned. I would not use soy for a business because of the product is not consistent and you either have to buy large quantities or you may end up rewicking everything. Soy blends seem to be more stable, but there have been some minor issues with 6006. Good luck with the business!

There is a lot about candles that doesn't make sense, but if five different people on this board are using that same container with the same wax and FO they are probably using five different wicks, and none of them are going to work for you. You could use the wick list to find the nearest equivalent to the HTP or LX wick.

I have that problem with new tins sometimes. You don't lose as much scent as you would think, a small hole wouldn't be a problem.

That is a good question.The experts on the board will tell you that certain fragrance categories tend to need to be wicked up, or down. I might be able to test this as I have 19 FOs that I have wicked for 6006. I would just need to test the density and compare it to the wicking. If they correlate it would make initial wicking much easier. I may try that when I get the time.

As a fellow engineer I’ll offer some advice. The first thing is your wax and FOs are all blended hydrocarbons, we are dealing with organic chemistry; so if, like me, you are not an expert in organic chemistry don’t try to understand it. Pick a wax and container and stick with it until you have that down pat. I would recommend you start with 4630 because any wax with soy requires curing. I find my HT is best with 4630 if I give it a week, but some FOs need a month or more in my soy blend. Now is the time to get your process down. If you start experimenting and your process isn’t fixed you can’t trust the results. I am a big proponent of blending. I read once that you only needed to stir the wax a few seconds and I ended up with a batch of candles with no HT. If you search this forum for Wick List you’ll find a thread with my wick list in it, it isn’t perfect, but it is a very useful tool. If you haven’t learned how to do a wickectomy do so. I find that wick size is more important than wick type; you will get a lot of different opinions on which type of wick works best in any given wax. Also I should warn you that your testing will sometimes yield anomalous results, if it looks wrong it probably is, and it probably wasn’t anything you did.

That shouldn't be a problem. Remelting soy wax means that you start from scratch on the cure time, so if you had already let the wax cure for two weeks it reverts back to its original state and you need to give it time to cure again.

The oxidation I can understand, I will definitely watch that with my 6006, I disconnect the power from the Presto Pot when I pour the wax into my pour pot so it should never stay hot for an extended period. I pour from my presto pot into a pour pot, and then into a second pour pot to weigh the wax. so I'm cooling a bit. I may set my hot plate up as a double boiler to get the was temp back up before adding my FO.

Now that I’ve moved to the garage and I’m using presto pots and a hot plate overheating is a real possibility. So my question my question is, what is too hot for the wax and the FO? As both the wax and FO are blended compounds there is probably something in each of them that would be the first thing to break down.

I understand where you're coming from, I just received 5 dozen tins and 600 wicks yesterday. Just what I need, another 60 candles.