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Swim_Bike_Run

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Everything posted by Swim_Bike_Run

  1. Thank you both for the kind words. I have learned that triathlons are easy compared to making a great candle. I think I decided to try candle making after watching my wife buy soy candles everytime we went to Cracker Barrell. I have been pretty pleased with the candles and how they are turning out. I decided to try the GB 464 since I have read good things about it. I also went ahead and decided to switch from the double boiler to the presto pot. There is a lot of varying info about temps, etc so I tried to use what I saw most often. I started with only 1 lb of wax and 1.5 oz of a sampler FO. Plan was to heat wax up to 185 degress, adding dye at 160, fragrance at 185 then remove from heat and stir a bit until it cools to 120 and pour. The issue was that the wax melted so fast and was at 200 degrees in less than 3 min. Granted it was only 1 lb but wow that was fast. I barely had time to add frangrance and dye!! I unplugged right away and let it cool and poured at 120. Few hours later the results were not pretty. Pay no attention to the color..these were testers for home use only =) Any idea what went wrong? Thanks in advance :smiley2: Brian
  2. Hi gang! I am about a year into making soy candles and am having good succcess for 1) a guy with no craft skills 2) someone with zero experience with wax, etc! Pretty happy so far. I have picked up most of what I know from this site and a few others and have been fortunate to not burn the house down and also make candles that just about all that have seen / smeeled them really enjoy. I have a good # of people asking to buy more and even have a small store locally asking to carry them. I am working on name, labels, website etc. I do have a few questions about some things...I am learning a bit by trial and error, that is ok too. Thanks in advance! I currently use a Hamilton Beach turkey roaster to melt my wax and melt about 4-7 lbs at a time. Seems like a little overkill to use this big roaster to melt wax...has anyone found good success using something smaller? I am using mostly Libbey Interlude 12oz jars. I have found the cheapest place to buy them is Lone Star Candle Co..they are about $.87 a piece before shipping. Anyone know if you can buy bulk or wholesale directly from a company like Libbey? I have been using C3 soy wax but amd going to try GB 464 this week. I keep reading varying things about melt temp, pour temp and when to add FO. Any definitive feedback on this? For a long time I was heating to 180 degrees then adding FO, stir for 2 min, add dye and stir for another 2 min. Then take off heat and stir every 10 degrees until temp reached 112 then pour into pour pot and then into jars. Cure for 24 hours before burning. I always use 1.5 oz PP. Smell and burn were great, but my tops were always a tad bubbly so I read on here to try pouring around 150 degress. I did this and the tops were super smooth but they all have a caving crater or sinkhole the next day. I am going to try to avoid this happening with the GB 464. I read that the melt point with the 464 is much lower and ideal pour temp is 135 degress. Does this sound about right? Thanks again!! Brian http://roadtoredemption.weebly.com/
  3. I am using the C-3 SOy Container Wax from Cajun Candles. Is that a one pour wax? Also, what is the best temp to pour at? I thought it was 110-112 degrees.... Brian
  4. Hi all - I have been making soy container candles for several months and have been very pleased with how they have turned out. Friends, family, co-workers and neighbors, love them. Very happy. So as I think about making a few more and selling them here and there, I have a couple of questions. Some of my triathlon buddies think I am a bit weird for making soy candles, but their wives love them so that is ok. =) Couple questions: 1. What is the point of a lid? I do not currently use them, but again I have not really tried to sell them to anyone I did not know. What purpose does it serve? Is it a true "necessity"? What if I eventually want to sell more of my candles? 2. Like I mentioned, I am very happy with how my candles smell, how they burn and love how they look. Working on labels, website, domain name, etc. I am in the IT field, so the web stuff is a whole lot more natural to me than the candle biz, but I'm learning. Anyway, the only real complaint I personally have with them is that the tops of the candles are not SMOOTH. They have some dimples, or small bumps and sometimes the tops are not completely level, that is, a small part will slightly "cave-in" after the wax hardens. I have never really thought of it as a problem before, as they smell great and burn well, and last a pretty long time. The appearance is not as important as the way it smells and burns, at least to me. However, yesterday, I was in a small packaging store and noticed a little stand with some soy candles that they sell in there and I bought one. About $9 for a 6-7 oz jar similar to my shape, only smaller. No lid, but did have a cardstock-type wrapper/label that went up over the top of the candle so it was "sort-of" a lid. Anyway, when I got home I was looking at this candle and the candle itself is very, very smooth and level. Not dimple filled like mine. Is there something I am doing to cause this? I am very precise with my melting and pouring. I melt my wax in a turkey roaster, slowly, and only add the fragrance and dye at about 180-185 degrees stirring each for 2 mins. Then I take it off the heat and stir as the temp. drops every 10-12 degrees. I then pour into a aluminum pour pot at 112 or so degrees and then straight into my libbey interlude 12 oz jars. I use the soy wax flakes from Canjun Candles and my Fragrance is from Bert's. About 1.25oz of fragrance per lb of wax. Sound ok? Any advice or insight is greatly welcomed and appreciated. =) Brian
  5. Ok, so I feel like we have the hard part figured out - making a great smelling candle that people who have bought them love (mostly friends, family, neighbors and coworkers). So far so good. What we cannot figure out is the label. To me, selling our candles to a larger audience is dependent on the label being right. We have experimented with basic computer generated label to stick on but the jar we are using - Libbey Interlude 12oz, is concaved in the middle making solid sticking difficult and it always bubbles a bit. We thought about using a yarn or small rope to tie around the middle and perhaps attach a label to that. Just dont know. We really like the jar and dont want to mess with that. Any suggestions? Brian
  6. Hi all...I have been getting most of my supplies from Cajun Candles and have been very pleased with our candles....burn good - smell good, etc. We are looking at reducing cost per candle, so the FO seemed to be the first place we decided to try other options. After reading a lot of good things about Bert's I ordered a few fragrances to try them out. Here is my question: I have been using 1.5oz PP for my 9 oz candles and like the mixture. Will I need to use the same mixture or a little less? Thanks in advance! Brian SBR
  7. Kimeroo - you were asking about what wicks I used: Heinz verhaegh - Stabilo CD-18 (6")... I got them at the Cajun Candles site. Brian
  8. Thanks for the replies...is this the Presto Kitchen pot you everyone is referring to? http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=888144
  9. Hi everyone! We have been reading and researching, and reading some more. Finally got everything together...got the room ready and ordered the supplies. Did our first batch yesterday and they turned out pretty good, considering it was our first try ever and something like this....neither my wife nor myself are really craft-savvy but love candles. Our plan was to learn to make a few great smelling, cool looking soy candles for ourselves and maybe friends and see where it takes us. I wanted to post a couple pics of our first product and also ask a few questions.... CANDLE ROOM: FIRST BATCH - SUGAR COOKIE - TOP VIEW: FIRST BATCH - SIDE VIEW: Here are some notes and questions from our first effort. We are happy we did not burn the house down or catch any of the pets on fire. We are also pleased that we made a decent candle to smelled good and burned evenly all the way across. We are using a Hamilton Beach 18Q Roaster for wax and we melted 3 lbs for the first batch. Containers are 12.5 oz Libbey Interlude so we estimated about 9oz candles. We got 5.5 candles out of this first amount. I am somewhat questioning if this was truly 4 lbs evenly though we measured it with our digital food scale - it was barely a third of the 10lb bag of - Naturewax C3 soy wax we got from Cajun Candles. Wax melted in about 1.5 hours at 200 degress and then we gradually turned up the temp on the roaster 25 degrees at a time until the wax finally got up to 185 degrees so we could add the fragrance and dye. It took another hour to hour and 15 minutes for the wax temp to get to 185 degrees and the roaster was at 350 degrees when we were done. Questions: 1. Once wax is melted, do we need to gradually up the roaster temp like we did or should we go ahead and turn it up to 300-350 degrees so we can add the fragrance and dye? We were not sure so we just went slow. 2. If you look at the top of our candle pic above - you can see several white circles or "splotches"...is this a result of something we did? Can we do anything to avoid these? 3. The side pic does not show it very well, but there is a white or light colored "band" - about an inch wide or so going around.....again, is this a result of something we did incorrectly? ***Note - all 5 of our candles have the white splotches at the top and the white band around the side. They do burn evenly and smell great so that is a good thing. Any other feedback is greatly appreciated! Thanks for all the info. SBR (Brian)
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