Jump to content

BusyBee

Registered Users Plus
  • Posts

    487
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    19

Everything posted by BusyBee

  1. @LilyJane Answers to your questions are both "Yes!". The one in above picture is purchased from South Korea. Many candle suppliers in South Korea does not have capacity to handle out of country orders, and a few who do charge ridiculous amount. It is $1.60 per wick. Not only that, the wicks are not the best in the world and has some flaws also. It also has patent infringe problem with Lumetique. That is why I am trying to make one myself or working with the manufacturer to modify it, so it can be brought to US. It is sturdy enough to stand by itself in the container, but it still need to be secured with wick tab. Otherwise, it will fall down or move around when wax is less than 1 inch left.
  2. @OmniiA Business Structure You will be dealing with Federal, State, County & City when you register your business. So, what might be best for me in Los Angeles CA might not be best business structure in other cities, counties or states. I have a LLC with S Corp designation that would be the best way to set up a candle business in Los Angeles CA (big tax write-off benefits of S Corp in CA and personal asset protection). But your city or state would be different. Consult with an attorney or your local CPA. Good CPA should be able to help you set up your business structure that is best for you for your area. This is not something where the answers can be found online, since we are living in a big country where local regulations are totally different from city to city, county to county & state to state. *City business license should be still required even if you have LLC with S Corp designation. But then, it depends on your city's requirements. Insurance No one insurance company is best for every candle companies. Even the same insurance company has different coverages and premiums for different cities, counties, states and different kind of operations. You should consult with middle broker insurance agencies in your area to find the best policy for your city and your operation type. Dealing with Hot Weather No container candle would survive in back of UPS truck in desert areas like Phoenix AZ or Palm Springs CA during hot summer. Temperature of UPS trucks cargo area go up to 150F during summer in those areas. You need to figure out what is best for your need and keep on developing better insulation for shipping. *I don't sell online nor flea markets because I did not want to deal with this problem. Waxes I don't see any preblended waxes good enough to be used in candle business. You will have to modify them in some way to make them better to be used in candle business or blend your own from scratch. I am still not good enough to create my own blend from scratch, so I just modify stock waxes for my candles. Playing with different waxes and mixing them little by little. Find out what you like and why. If you don't know why you like your blend better than other blends, then you don't have a strong candle product. *You will not be able to achieve both strong CT & HT in one blend, and you might have to sacrifice little bit to balance them out by blending different waxes in different portion. Wicks First of all, there are no good wood wicks on the current market, and none of them are reliable to be used in candle business. Like stock waxes, there are no good stock wick on the market either. You will need to modify the waxes to make it work with certain wick or you will need to develop a wick to work in certain wax. FOs Finding good FOs for your wax play big part in performance of CT and HT, too. I know this is not exact answers you wanted, but we are all in different situations and goal would be different. Good luck with your venture!
  3. Lumetique has so many wick patents that some covers many materials including papers with planar & several other shapes. That's all they do. They keep on filing patent after another without developing actual good product. Well! Thanks to their patents, it allows others to develop a great wick without infringe their patents rights. Their wicks and instruction(their patents) shows us what not to do. 🤣
  4. @CandleNoob Here is answers to your question on scratching marks on wooden wick. The main reason why wooden wick will dimming out would be interruption in capillary action due to inconsistency of wood density. I had picked Balsa as the best wooden wick material too, but it would have the same problem as other woods. There are ways to improve capillary action of wooden wick. Someone suggested long time ago that hammering down the wood wick to loosen the fibers in woods which I think is one of the bright idea. Boiling wooden wick in oil was good. Coating the wood with other materials to improve external capillary action is another good idea. Scratching to create shallow cut or mark on wooden wick would increase capillary action also. Below picture is the one that was dimming out before I scratched wooden wick with many lines. You should be able to see lines in the picture which the melted wax will flow upward through that tiny gap into the flame. Even with these improvement, the inconsistency of wooden wick was too much to handle like flare up and many other little problems! Whether it's natural fiber wick or wooden wick, I believe there are several ways to make it work better than what is available on the market. I guess we just need little creative thinking thus came paper wick. I am just experimenting! 😉
  5. Here are some interesting article by Chris Woodford on candle flames and heat. Here are some approximate temperatures for the different parts of a candle and its flame. Note that the exact temperatures vary quite a bit depending on all kinds of different factors, notably the type of wax from which the candle is made but also the ambient (air) temperature, and how much oxygen is present. Please don't take these values as absolutely definitive ones that apply in all cases—they're just a rough guide. 1. Wick: 400°C (750°F). 2. Blue/white outer edge of the flame (and also the blue cone underneath flame where the oxygen enters): 1400°C (2550°F). 3. Yellow central region of the brightest part of the flame: 1200°C (2190°F). 4. Dark brown/red inner part of the flame: 1000°C (1830°F). 5. Red/orange inner part of the flame: 800°C (1470°F). 6. Body of the candle: 40–50°C (104–122°F). 7. Melted pool of wax on top of the candle: 60°C (140°F). How does heat travel? One thing you've probably noticed about heat is that it doesn't generally stay where you put it. Hot things get colder, cold things get hotter, and—given enough time—most things eventually end up the same temperature. How come? There's a basic law of physics called the second law of thermodynamics and it says, essentially, that cups of coffee always go cold and ice creams always melt: heat flows from hot things toward cold ones and never the other way around. You never see coffee boiling all by itself or ice creams getting colder on sunny days! The second law of thermodynamics is also responsible for the painful fuel bills that drop through your letterbox several times a year. In short: the hotter you make your home and the colder it is outside, the more heat you're going to lose. To reduce that problem, you need to understand the three different ways in which heat can travel: called conduction, convection, and radiation. Sometimes you'll see these referred to as three forms of heat transfer. Conduction Conduction is how heat flows between two solid objects that are at different temperatures and touching one another (or between two parts of the same solid object if they're at different temperatures). Walk on a stone floor in your bare feet and it feels cold because heat flows rapidly out of your body into the floor by conduction. Stir a saucepan of soup with a metal spoon and you'll soon have to find a wooden one instead: heat travels rapidly along the spoon by conduction from the hot soup into your fingers. Convection Convection is the main way heat flows through liquids and gases. Put a pan of cold, liquid soup on your stove and switch on the heat. The soup in the bottom of the pan, closest to the heat, warms up quickly and becomes less dense (lighter) than the cold soup above. The warmer soup rises upward and colder soup up above it falls down to take its place. Pretty soon you've got a circulation of heat running through the pan, a bit like an invisible heat conveyor, with warming, rising soup and cooling, falling soup. Gradually, the whole pan heats up. Convection is also one of the ways our homes heat up when we turn on the heating. Air warms up above the heaters and rises into the air, pushing cold air down from the ceiling. Before long, there's a circulation going on that gradually warms up the entire room. Radiation Radiation is the third major way in which heat travels. Conduction carries heat through solids; convection carries heat through liquids and gases; but radiation can carry heat through empty space—even through a vacuum. We know that much simply because we're alive: almost everything we do on Earth is powered by solar radiation beamed toward our planet from the Sun through the howling empty darkness of space. But there's plenty of heat radiation on Earth too. Sit near a crackling log fire and you'll feel heat radiating outward and burning your cheeks. You're not in contact with the fire, so the heat's not coming to you by conduction and, if you're outside, convection probably isn't carrying much toward you either. Instead, all the heat you feel travels by radiation—in straight lines, at the speed of light—carried by a type of electromagnetism called infrared radiation. Most candle system should not burn off FOs easily even though it happens to us once in a while. If it does, then I am suspecting that it is the FO(or FO and wax combo) that is causing problem not the candle system. Unless I am using super weird wick like Cottonwood wick, which would burn off every FOs after 20 minutes.
  6. You might want to stir vigorously so all the ingredients can be blended well together. I stir gently when I started candle making. But I found out that the harder I stir the better it is. How hot do you heat your wax up to? Your blend would be mostly soy, so I am guessing that it would be better if you don't go over 185F. As for the pouring temperature, most soy wax would work well between 130 to 140F which I prefer to pour 130F. *Your mixture can be little different. Who said fugly tops after burn of soy is normal? This is picture of 100% 464 after burn. Fugly tops after burn of soy wax can be solved by using right wick. It's hard, but it can be done.
  7. One printer can cover all different types of printing needs. But in order to get the best result, you will need more than one. Black laser printer: Invoices, shipping labels, contracts, and best for black & white labels. Color laser printer: Best for less graphic color labels where letters & logo need to stand out. *I do warning labels with color laser printer, but color inkjet will do the job also. Color ink jet printer: Best for full graphic color labels where pictures need to standout more than the letters.
  8. I use one that has chip for my WF-7110 which needs chip bypassing trick. But the one for WF-2860 are all chipless system, and they needs chipless firmware to be installed on your printer. It should work, but I don't recommend doing this unless you have some computer software knowledge. But FYI, these are the web links that sells them. This is the one for WF2860. It is around $90($50 for the system & $40 for the Pigment inks) with "Pigment Ink" which will last for very long time. *If you go down little bit of their web page, then it will explain how the chipless thing works. https://www.inkxpro.com/INKXPRO-Chipless-CISS-for-Epson-WF2860-p/ciss-chipless-202.htm They also have "Refillable Refill Ink Cartridge" which cost a lot less. https://www.ebay.com/itm/294913103554?_trkparms=amclksrc%3DITM%26aid%3D1110002%26algo%3DSPLICE.SOI%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D238311%26meid%3Dfacdff9103404b75bf2f8a9caa854b48%26pid%3D101196%26rk%3D1%26rkt%3D12%26sd%3D294874454699%26itm%3D294913103554%26pmt%3D1%26noa%3D0%26pg%3D2047675%26algv%3DPromotedSellersOtherItemsV2WithMLRv3%26brand%3DUnbranded&_trksid=p2047675.c101196.m2219&amdata=cksum%3A294913103554facdff9103404b75bf2f8a9caa854b48|enc%3AAQAGAAABACtrZQ7uyU6NyRWMuc0OogoSa%2FUIDys%2F02w7jR10vOAtm9lp7JdLT7FGbmlI1Mu2NgpeGOI1V4LVMROE7ictagf1wqVog09y%2FsfdGHrZzxJ8C%2BqyAQveq2DHME2%2ByZWRbs6Y9PZFL0mNIgFEVz6Eww26iM7GDbUe7AXKhWse36a4zgDjzNnQEhV1qQ18achKEaPgXnAdWQAtgq3G2bmUSwqA1ytoNA7DG3hvg5b5%2FPJvGAd32UGiMW%2FFiW5pizZ79oZk1p5yLXNy0rHzp7js%2BGmtnenTBN%2FTSdLmUzvPO99%2Fb29hZx6WOsJ07ed1Awximpa5HXYSQeYPYhfr0oDIYbA%3D|ampid%3APL_CLK|clp%3A2047675 Inkjet printer's heads will clog up easily if not used in certain period of time. It need to print something at least once a week to avoid clog up. Also, these inks have shelf life of 2 years. So, inks should be used within 2 years. Printer type should be decided upon your label needs. I use all three inkjet, color laser & black laser printers for my labels because I need all three printers for my different labels. One printer could do the job, but quality is totally different. When I need black & white labels, black laser printer will provide true black result than color laser printer. My estimated ink costs for recharged after market ink cartridges was about 11 cents for letter size blank labels. With factory cartridge, that would be close to 20 cents per page. But using these continuous ink system, the cost would be less than 1 cent per page. I am guessing it would cost 2 cents per page for the Eco Tank printer. When you do 3,000 pages of labels with Eco Tank printer, then that would be $270 saving(or $540 saving comparing to the original). Try to find refurbished Eco Tank printer even though you might have to spend little bit more than your original budget. With these printers, spending more on hardware could be spending less in total costs. *I have full graphics when I use inkjet printer which use a lot of inks. One more thing! I laminate the labels which would cost 25 cents per page. Labels become water proof, and it provides professional look. Good luck on finding your printer that works for your need!
  9. You might pay more upfront for Epson Eco Tank or HP Smart Tank printers, but you will save tons of money on ink costs. So, actually one of those will cost less in the long run, and you are on right track about thinking of getting one. The ink cartridges now days have chips which to stop us to do refills, but there are after market ink tank system similar to Eco Tank. I use Epson WF-7110 printer with one of "Continuous Ink System", and it is saving me tons of money. The print quality is little bit inferior to original Epson ink, but it does the job nicely. Below picture is one of those system for the Epson WF-2860. *These are not easy to install, and it requires occasional reinstalling and resetting because of the chip recognition function of the printer. Sometimes, the printer will automatically assume that I am out of inks after certain amount of prints which would require resetting. It needs to bypass chip recognition when it is installed, and it would require several(or up to 30 or 40 times) installations to get this done. They have "Chipless Continuous Ink System" also which I haven't tried. You might also want to check out on those too.
  10. This happened when I over heated 464. Picture below is heated to 205, but similar things happened when I heat it more than 190. This happened when I stir gently and don't mix FO well with the wax. FO should be added at any temperature above 170, and it should be stirred really well. These are good poured 100% 464. I heat the wax to 182. I add FO anywhere between 170 to 182 and stir vigorously. I pour at 130 - 135. This is at room temperature around 70. You might want to play around with pouring temperature to find right one for different room temperatures. *I use 10 to 12% FO. *If you add 4% IGI R2322A (Glass Glow Palm) to 464, then it will behave a lot better. Smooth top after burn is possible if you can find the right wick in 464.
  11. If you plan to make and sell candles online and attending few fairs, then most(including insurance company) will consider you as small part time operation. And you are going to have less hard time registering your business than other candle operation. But Seller's Permit must be required in any state.
  12. So, you are in CA. Your operation would fall under "Commercial Coventurer". https://oag.ca.gov/charities/pf Below are some of private-label candle companies in Southern CA. They should give you some idea about how you would want to charge. http://www.modern-candle.com/ http://candleconsultants.com/ https://uniquecandles.net/ California Candle Supply also do private-labeling. They had low MOQ and was asking for $3 labor for each candle. That was few years back, and they might have raised the price since hour minimum wage has gone up since. They do private-labeling only if everything was bought from them. That means they make profit on ingredients & containers also. Good luck!
  13. That is called "Private-Labeling". Some charge only for the labor and some will mark up on ingredients and parts also. It all depends on how much you want to make. If they only want 60, then you should charge more than big volume order. Many big private-labelers would ask for minimum order of 200 or 300 per scent. You also mentioned "They will also honor the donation aspect of our business.". Be careful what you state in your website or advertisement about donating certain portion of your sales. If you mention that your portion of sales go to certain non-profits, then it is regulated by fundraising regulation. Each state has different regulation on this. So, check your state government's regulation about what you can claim and not. It is State General Attorney in CA, who we have to register and file paperwork for doing such.
  14. If you are registering LLC, then you are registering your business at state level. But then, there are local regulations and ordinances to follow also. If you are only selling online, then LLC should take care of most business filing process. But what are you selling? Do you make the products or do you buy them wholesale and sell online? Trader's license is something only MD has. Like you said, it is different in each state. But it is also different in each county and each city. Your local CPA or business attorney(more expensive) should be the one who knows most and can guide you through business filing process for your operation. Some CPA does business filings for free to get your accounting business. *I see that you have not mentioned about Seller's Permit. If you make candles, then you might need zoning clearance from City Planning and clearance from Fire Department. Once again, your local CPA should know the most.
  15. It appears to me that you did not get her point. She is saying "Don't waste time and money on this wax!". It would be wasting more of everyone's time if she got into worthless detailed review. She gave us just enough reasons to prevent us from trying out this wax. Why should anyone listen to her? Because she has extensive experience on blending soy waxes.
  16. Welcome to candle makers world! Finding the right wax, wick, & container shape combo is the hardest part of candle developing. If you have not done that, then I recommend you to do that before you look for fragrance compounders/houses/manufacturers. It would take a lot of trial and error to find right wax, wick & container combo. You can work with any local supplier's FOs(if there is any) while you are working on that. *Hint: No successful candle makers would be using stock waxes. No stock wax will work great, and they will need to be modified in some ways. Wick manufacturers have better wicks that candle suppliers don't carry, and they only sell to candle manufacturers(small or large). I am just saying that better wicks are available at manufacturers. As long as FOs are manufactured in US, they would be similar in quality if it was ordered right unless someone ordered them to use the cheapest possible materials to save cost. It's just matter of who created better accord to present certain scent. One FO manufacturer would make 20 different types of Rose FOs. Which would be the best rose FO among them? You tell me! *There is no best high end FO manufacturer. Whatever works for me would be the best company. Enjoy your candle journey & good luck!
  17. Description on William Sonoma's website says Paper core cotton wick. If it is loosely woven, then I am suspecting it might be Atkins & Pearce Paper core wick.
  18. I have not made any Lotion/Massage candle, but I thought this might help you little. We had some people in here that had interests in creating massage candles, so I believe they will response to your question. https://spwax.com/products/MassageCandleBlend/sp-456 *Please be aware that lotion candles are under FDA regulations! Good luck, and let us know how your project turns out!
  19. Please keep in mind that not all soy waxes behave in same manner, and I use 464. In order to get smooth top, 5 things need to be done right for 464. 1. Do not over heat the wax. 2. You have to mix the ingredients really well. Stir vigorously! 3. Follow manufacturer's recommended pouring temperature. For 464, it is 130 to 140F, and I pour at 135F and below. 4. Find the right ambient room temperature. Cold room temperature is always bad, and I find it around 73F is best for 464. 5. Do not place other poured candles too close together when cooling them. *It would be good if you can provide cooling environment where bottom of the container do not keep the heat. If the top part cools and sets up before the bottom, then it will cause problem. It appears to me that your ingredients are not well mixed enough by looking at color of your candle, but you might want to check with other things too. And also, may I ask why you are using aluminum foil? That might have affected your cooling environment. *Heat gun will fix some issues, but it will never produce professional result for soy wax. Below is picture of good single poured 464. But sometimes, I get little wrinkles on some candles. But if I do double pour, then I get much better mirror like finish all the time which I have decided to do double pour now days. Have fun and keep trying!
  20. That 4 weeks only applies to their wax processors who get a bulk tank in liquid form.
  21. Here is more information on SoyMAX. https://owensborograin.com/candle-wax/
  22. @GoldieMN That is nice find! SoyMax is resistered trademark of Owensboro Grain Company, so they should be the same stuff. Here is the Data Sheet.
  23. I add palm wax not the palm oil. I am not sure if there is going to be difference in those two.
  24. @Kay P It's almost impossible to get decent HT out of any 100% soy wax. We will need to add something to make them perform better, but vybar is not the solution. If your targeted market is against using paraffin, then 5% palm works really well. Some others add coconut wax. Just don't add too much. Soy wax will frost over time when they are exposed to the lights. Only way to prevent it is to use colored packaging that can block lights. If your targeted market is the one who does not like paraffin, then you are dealing with the hardest to deal with group. It's only a small group that are unpredictable and does not have proper candle knowledge. And also, you will be competing against other candle makers who will be lying about their ingredients. I make soy candles, but that is one market that I don't want to target myself. There are so many other targets that we can sell lots of candles without hassle.😉
×
×
  • Create New...