Kevin Fischer

And... WSP has been sold to a different private equity firm.  Wow.  Just wow.

https://inclineequity.com/incline-sells-wholesale-supplies-plus/

Kudos for searching before posting though!

Burned a tin in 2°F MN weather for fun a few days ago.  Takes a LOT more thermal energy to melt wax, and it tunneled like crazy.  That's an extreme temperature, but the theory holds up.  Warmer environments need less wick, colder environments need more.  Balancing the combustion on top of that?  That's where things get really interesting.  Just cause you can generate the right amount of heat doesn't mean you're making a healthy candle.

21 hours ago, bfroberts said:

And one last thing....don’t believe anything you read on FB or Reddit or watch on YouTube. 99% of it is just wrong.

Agreed.

Is it greater than 3"?

oh no

The craziest part is how much disruption two reports of high flames and broken glass caused.  Not to suggest the other 141,998 were safe, but just how serious candle safety is taken by CPSC.

I find items like insurance, rent, equipment, and anything else that doesn't play well on a per-candle basis are best calculated on an axis of time as a period cost.  And I pay for it like this:

1. I'll break down my costs for every unit (like @MilosCandlesdid above)... call these unit costs
2. Estimate the sales for every unit over a period of time - let's use a month for arguments sake... call this revenue
3. Determine the effective monthly costs that aren't unit-based... call these period costs
   • If insurance cost $500/yr, that would be $42 a month.
   • I buy about $50 of shipping supplies per month (hard to map this 1:1 with a candle if you occasionally ship multiples together)
   • If my equipment budget was $100/yr, that would be $8 a month
   • If my craft show overhead totaled $135... that would be $135
4. For a one month period, I now have total costs of my operation (ignoring cashflow) by adding total unit costs with total period costs
5. My net profit is the #2 - #4 (monthly revenue - all costs for the month)

The only way it makes sense for me to calculate time is if I truly hire somebodies help and can easily tie it into a unit cost of the candle... but typically that's easier to manage as a period cost.  "Paying" for my time on an hourly basis is wildly difficult to estimate, but it's fun to see how I end up over the course of a month by dividing my estimated total time investment by the net profit.

So yeah... keeping with the x2 and x3 idea is a bit crazy and really depends on the impact of your period costs.  As with all estimations, these things work best with data and good structure.  Hopefully I didn't take this wildly off track, @TallTayl!

12 hours ago, TallTayl said:

@Kevin Fischer, can you please help me boost the signal that a, “melt pool is a limit, not a goal!”? I’m seeing the double-wick trend for  HT, on top of 12%+  FO loads ending in candle fires. Another one just popped up.
 

Everyone has somehow been convinced that if they don’t get FMp within an hour it is a fail.  This is the most dangerous trend right now. Overscnting is the second. Adding FO too low (by flash point) is the third. Let’s turn that ship around. 

@TallTayl definitely.  It wouldn't hurt to dedicate an entire series to safety. 

@Marisa11 thank you!  I agree - some of the BBW candles I've had were alarmingly hot.

For what it's worth, I've got a blog post about it

https://armatagecandlecompany.com/blog/basic-burn-test/

You may also find some of my verbal diarrhea on the tube as well.

Safety always trumps performance/hot throw.  Great testing sheet!  And I feel like we need to encourage others in our industry to build more tracing into their product lines.  Freaks me out how easy it is to get into candle making.  I'm not a huge proponent of regulation, but I can't for the life of me figure out why these ASTM standards didn't become mandatory.  They seem to have died before a council a few years back.  Calling them Voluntary makes people think they have a choice, if they even know it exists at all lol

6

Generally speaking, a week should give you a decent look at whether the wick is going to work.  Two weeks is better than one, but C-3 will evolve/harden forever.  A few months and the wick that worked at 1-week might be too small at 3 months.  Most of that behavior settles in the first two weeks (anecdotally, at least).

Also comes down to "when" you're expecting your consumers to use them a bit, but I always wait two weeks.  I kill time by pouring candles every day.

On 7/30/2020 at 2:21 PM, Kerven said:

I think the FP method might draw a little from boiling point and vapor pressure, but those numbers aren't as readily available as FP.

I'd pay to see boiling points on the fragrance oils.  I mean, I can do it myself but that's so much work.  General volatility is tied up to the boiling point.  I just don't know how complex fragrance oils are compared to essential oils that potentially contain hundreds of different compounds that evaporate at different rates.

Essential oils suffer in the performance category mostly because of their volatility in the presence of candle making temperature ranges, but they also degrade from light and heat.

Just go really interested in the EO/FO volatility discussion as things went along.  No need to hijack this thread any further!

The way you use the word "layer" makes me think you're talking about a second pour event, rather than sub-surface cratering, yes?

As in, the top dips down like a bowl and you're filling that in to have a flat-topped candle?

For sure.  At that point we're probably discussing the effective volumes and a weird level of thermodynamic interpolation.  Even if we answered it perfectly, it doesn't matter because flash points are irrelevant for candle making processes.

Flashing off aromatic compounds is part of why wick sizing ends up being important (among other reasons) for generating a flame that works in harmony with the melt pool.  An entirely different discussion of it's own.

8 hours ago, birdcharm said:

What do they mean when they say it's important to "never heat your fragrance beyond that temperature" (flashpoint), that would mean that some f/o's with a low flashpoint shouldn't even be used to make a candle.

 

 

 I don't think they understood your question. 

("How do those vapors escape when they're mixed into another medium (melted wax, for instance)?")

If you took the fragrance oil by itself and just cooked it at the flash point, it would indeed start giving off vapor that would harmlessly become a gas unless you lit it with a match.

But, if you took your room temperature FO and mix it with liquid wax (which is much warmer), does the FO behave the same way as if it was by itself?  I'm not a chemist, but I think the answer is most certainly no.  The FO + wax is a new fluid with properties of its own, including an effective flash point much higher than our candle making range.  My question was a dumb-but-honest attempt to have them explain a little more of the apparent pseudo-science.  If you took fragrance oil that was giving off vapor and drowned it deep in the ocean, would those vapors even go anywhere, or would they be trapped in water?

Yeah - frustrating that they won't follow up with critics in the comments.  (source: am one of the critics in comments) 🤣

@Forrest... dug this one out of the archives.  I don't remember if you posted the results anywhere else but call me interested!

Interestingly, I just did a lot of research into phthalates myself and left with an entirely different set of information than what I just assumed to be true.

The only phthalate anyone in the fragrance oil game confesses to using is diethyl phthalate which... is cleared as non carcinogenic by a few authoritative places (WHO, CDC, European Commission, IFRA - though it's no surprise the IFRA isn't leading the charge to prove toxicity of fragrance ingredients).  DEP isn't on the Prop 65 list either.

Other phthalates are linked to health issues, but DEP isn't.  When manufacturers made the shift to remove all phthalates awhile ago there was a noticeable change in performance and a heft impact on longstanding candle designs.

What did you find in your fragrance oils that was on the Prop 65 list?

- Me, 2 years later

While being a perfectly respectful answer towards @colibri, it was an absolutely savage response to the general "natural" wax industry.  I love it.

I actually don't see why it wouldn't work, but the amount of wax you'd end up with in the candle would be much smaller unless you really pack it in.  Doesn't scale super well either, but maybe it doesn't have to. 

Worth trying!

Fantastic.  I never even considered the cooling rate in the pour pot before despite my constant stirring.  I'll give it a go - big thanks!

On 1/10/2020 at 9:05 PM, TallTayl said:

C3 can be really temperamental. I had the most success by: 

heat to 185,
stir FO in very well with a wide spatula.

place pour pot in front of a fan, keep stirring Often until you see it cloud

pour into your jars

cool where there are no drafts.

 

grains mean a couple of things, like cooling much too slowly or not enough stirring. Those fragrance loads you note seem fine if they were calculated correctly. 

@TallTayl - do you mean cooling prior to pouring or after it's poured?

I always suspected grains like the ones below were tied to the ambient room temp and curing conditions.  Using C3 yesterday I had a grainy top after it initially set, so I heat gunned the poor thing and put the lid on.

• Max temp: 185 (I didn't temper this in any way)
• Poured around 125, probably 20-25 minutes after max temp
• Ambient room temp was around 68 I think.  Definitely no drafts.
• I probably heat gunned it 30-45 minutes after I poured (which I'm calling "Initial Set" below)

Initial Set

Heat Gunned Top

Top after I removed the lid

You'll probably get decent results with a 3 hour interval test, but it'll take you longer to finish the testing phase 😀

I've always done 4-hour all the way down (when things go well) and a long-burn of the same candle a few times... that one can be upwards of 10 hours or more.

I guess it depends on the target audience.  It's probably useful to segment "beginners" as it's own topic, but everything else by purpose. 

I'm of the opinion that a masterclass series focused on each type of candle (container, votive, pillar, tart, artsy) would be the entry point for everything besides beginner.  Beginner is a series that I imagine covers a little of every topic in relative sequence.

Using container candles as an example...

Container Candles Series

Lesson 1: Choosing Supplies

Lesson 2: Craftsmanship Theory

Lesson 3: Safety & Performance Testing

Every lesson has articles and videos meant to be completed in any order (for that lesson) that review general recommendations by this community, why, and how to implement.