TallTayl

Seems to only be a consideration when some scary article or shock advertising mentions it. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve been asked about phthalates in the last couple of decades. Once by a competitor. Once by someone who heard the word in a news segment and called them “thigh lights”.

Check the supplier list on this forum. Choose a place close to you and check pretty much any wax they have. You may be near a supplier where you can will-call your order. many fragrance suppliers offer waxes that will work in melts. You just never know what you are really buying at hobby shops to find an equivalent at a supplier. Their suppliers and lots change often. It may take some testing to find the right fit.

I had similar experiences with all of those commonly recommended wicks. Chugging like that will inevitably lead to soot and overheating as the candle burns down. Kudos to you for performing baseline testing! This will propel you to candle success so much faster than skipping this step. You’ll be able to quickly test new batches of wax to identify any variations between lots that can get you into a pickle. I’ve had much better luck with Premier 700 series in nearly all of my container waxes. Second best rigid curl in many waxes. honorable mention to CDN. the beef I have with CD, CDN, HTP (which are nearly identical to CD), and other coreless wicks is the weird curl (sometimes they fold over on themselves like a misshapen candy cane) and the inevitable leaning that makes the melt pool go off center pretty dramatically. You can also try the smallest ECO sizes in your candle since you already have had decent luck with them, just were recommended by CandleScience to use much too large of a size. Ride that series out since you’ve already gone the other way. ECO come in sizes as small as 0.5, 0.75 and 1 at different retailers. if you get flicker and growing flames you definitely need to wick down. If you don’t have one already, consider getting an IR thermometer to track your container temps. There’s lots of debate among different self-trained candle experts about the highest allowable container temp. Someone, somewhere, a long time ago claimed ASTM (the governing body for candle safety) said the max temp of any container during a burn is 170 (or 175*F) depending on who you ask. That is not true as I purchased the most recent published standards and conversed with people at ASTM. Not wanting to drop the bone, this doggie kept digging to find the common temp limits by UL testing for candle retailers. I learned commonly documents UL max temp is 125*F for metal and 140/145*F for glass or ceramic containers. If your container gets too hot you run the risk of breakage, and potentially flashover. You’ll find several candle safety threads here, with at least one that points to a you tube video of candle safety testing by a man who wrote the safety standards who confirms the UL testing report temps.

Welcome to the world of soy wax. It will frost eventually, you just got there quicker. Soy is hydrogenated soybean oil. It dries out and reforms it’s Crystal structure for the entire life of the candle. Any swings in temp will make those pesky grains form quicker. dyes and many fragrance oil components also contribute to the frost. to prevent frosting (well, delay it as long as possible) it needs a support wax like paraffin, some kinds of coconut waxes or fine grained vegetable waxes like ceda cerica. before people get all “my soy doesn’t frost”, pick out a well aged candle and dig out the wax. It grains, and moreso over time as the wax dries.

Sao Vitor in Florida may be able to help https://www.saovitor.com/religious-jar-candle-wicks/ or, have you tried plain old Palm Wax? IGI5601-a and IGI5801-A both work well in religious type jars. 5601 and 5801 have different melt characteristics and points. Palm can be wicked to burn slowly in very narrow jars.

Welcome and good luck. 😊 you will find hits and misses at every supplier. Some here will disagree about how good/not good the same fragrance is based on their nose or wax. Start with a few 1 Oz samples and see how you like them, then branch out. You learn A LOT by smelling from different suppliers.

Most candle suppliers have it in yellow or white. Candlewic has a lot to pick from. I’d stay away from Ebay, Amazon, Alibaba, etc.

You can buy most wick material by the spool and tab as you wish. Candlewic.com has hundreds of sizes.

What do you mean?

What category of perfume do you prefer? Warm? Woody? Fresh? Oriental?

Testing is the investment in your chandler education. Many people skip the testing and face consequences they could have easily prevented. your first mission as a maker of candles is to make a safe product. If you’ve not yet heard of ASTM, familiarize yourself with the candle safety tests to ensure you don’t get yourself into a pickle. There are several threads about ASTM and candle safety on this forum. if your flame sputters and grows during a burn as described a few posts above in this thread, you will quickly learn that your choice of wick is not optimal. Flaring during a short burn like that means it will most certainly fail during a later burn in the candle’s life, along with hotter/higher flares during a power burn. take measurements of the container temp as you test. An IR thermometer will become your best friend. If the glass heats beyond acceptable temps at any point it’s back to the drawing board to choose another wick. many people speak of “tunneling”, but our definition differs. Look at the shape of the melt pool. It wasn’t that long ago when full melt pools (especially early in a candle’s life) were something to be prevented. Many waxes make a wide “U” shaped melt pool where the candle wax melts down the sides of the “U” to provide fresh scented wax so the candle burns 1) safely and 2) as fresh as day 1 through the entire candle’s life, if you look at wick charts, many melt pool measurements are small, like 1-2”. They were made intentionally to make these “U” shaped narrow, not-full melt pools. to me, a “tunnel” has straight sides that never catch up. If you burn the candle from start to finish, a tunnel will bore a hole directly down the center of the candle leaving even wax from the top to the bottom when the candle self extinguishes. These melt pools (obviously) have steep sides, not a wide “U” shape that gradually catches up by the mid point of the candle. the off center melt pools can sometimes be remedied by: twisting of the wick as you tried, offsetting the wick slightly to take advantage of the directional curl, or switching wick series. Many coreless wick series (CD,CDN, HTP, Ply) curl intentionally to attempt to prevent carbon heading. The curl makes an off center melt pool by design right in the wick manufacturer’s literature. if I were you, I would try different series, like Premier 700 series, rigid curl or even ultra core. Your wax will need to be wicked down to achieve the best, safest performance. hot throw issues may be due to: wick selection (series/too big/too small), “bad” wax batch, incompatible fragrance, too much/too little fragrance. Every fragrance is made of different aromachemicals and diluents which may require different wicking. I’m very picky about my fragrance sources after so many “failures”. I can’t count the $ burned on testing, but am thankful for every single lesson as it made me a much better chandler in the long run.

Magnolia is another powerful one in my waxes.

I keep a couple around from there. Oakmoss Sandalwood is lovely. The eucalyptus spearmint throws well for me in most waxes, I just wish I liked it. I have to wick swap a lot to dial in. And never pay full price. Wait for those sales that come up once a month or so.

They can vary. If you can get the tech documents of what you buy that might keep you in a somewhat consistent range. Buying in bulk from the same source is usually the best bet, though.

Vybar may help with some of the sweat, just don't use too much as it will often inhibit the throw. Why not just dial back the fragrance load? With the right wax/wick/container combo I often need far less of a good quality fragrance to fully scent the space.

Which microwaxes do you have? Some are stickier than others. The downside is many microwaxes tank HT if used at >a tiny fraction of a %. i used to like Igi 4786 for rubbery adhesion. Didn’t love the ht or initial burn, so I guess we had a trade off debate with each.

I feel your pain.

I use a griddle to melt the bottoms flat. Cutting beeswax will often make them crack

Hey @CeCeii replied by Pm to you earlier today. I hid the other post to prevent your contact from being over shared.

When measuring in grams, the rounding is so slight with candles that rounding errors won’t amount to all that much. when measuring in ounces, rounding will be more error prone, if that makes sense. All of this is really relative to the batch size. If you’re making one 2 oz candle the rounding errors will be significant. If making 100 2 oz candles the rounding won’t matter much at all. with labeling, look up Marie Gale. She has written several books about labeling with a slant toward the cosmetics side, but the rules still apply for weights and measures. i would not be so granular as to go the partial decimal places. In many countries weights should be presented on the labels in both grams and ounces. I’ve never noticed any ounces presented beyond the tenth of an ounce unless the items are sold in really teensy amounts.

Welcome aboard! when measuring ingredients, “Aim small, miss small.”. The more accurate you are with measurements, the easier you will be able to scale up/down with batches. Any miscalculations will be magnified when scaling up. For bath product I was already in the habit of using grams. For small candle batches, I use grams. For larger batches I use oz. out of habit. I sometimes catch myself and use kilos as they are easier to calculate and double check my work than oz. When rounding, I try not to. This is where grams come in handy. Unless working with tiny amounts, as with cosmetics where 1/10th gram is usually close enough, whole grams for candles is more accurate. Labeling laws are pretty clear, your net weight of the container contents must contain AT LEAST the stated amount on the label. It can be more, but never less. Using your example, the labeling laws would require your label to round down to ensure all of your finished candles weigh at least what is stated. If I had a 4.87 oz product, I would weigh a large batch to ensure this was the lowest, then label more like 4.5oz to be 100% sure the customer receives what is stated. If you fill by a line on the container, you will find some waxes and fragrance combos to be less dense, and will weigh less in the finished candles. Given how many people have measured the length of a subway foot long, found it to be shy of the foot, and won in court, why risk it?

Probably fine 👍🏻

It costs MORE to make smaller sizes for sure! When I first started making candles, I thought I needed to offer 3 or 4 sizes. Then when you sit and do the math about how many configurations that is it's mind boggling. Stocking that many containers is too much of a challenge. Plenty of Instagram people figured out 1 size works just fine. Do it well and it sells to the right customer. i can't please everyone, but I can sure aim to please "my" people, right? If you want, PM your ship to addy and I'll drop one of these in the mail to you 😃

Sampling is a very big part of the online business, absolutely. I send product samples with purchases for people who like samples. Believe it or not, some people complained about getting free samples. One issue to consider is postage. A soap sample can be several dollars to ship first class as it is too thick for the post office to consider a letter. A thin piece, like the old Avon samples, that can go out first class mail for a regular stamp have a big place in a marketing campaign! In the past for fragrance co-ops I had used foil around absorbent paper, which did the job, but was not really memorable. I found little heat seal packets that might work, though they can be kind of $... Offering samples in product is an avenue I've been trying to make worthwhile. As you figured out, the scent in soap, room spray, lotion or candles can differ from out of the bottle. Spending hours a day shipping sample orders for little to no profit is not attractive to me. I learned that hard lesson a while back. If I make the same profit a the end of the day sending sample packets as petting my dog watching old Hulu shows, I'd rather pet my dog The sample sets need to be easy to put together, attractive enough for people to spend money to buy and profitable enough to keep everyone happy.

Your needs in a warm, dry climate will be different from more norther areas. you “could” use beeswax and coconut, but will find that without other stabilizers they will sweat and slump in storage and transit. I purchase voluspa, notorious for that blend, and was surprised at how they arrived even during less than”hot” weather. Likewise, not all beeswaxes and coconut oils burn the same, so your local supply will vary. Some I made would not stay lit. Some burned like a Bunsen burner. Are you not considering manufacturers like Accublend or Cal wax? Engineering a wax for candle production is a very complex process. While anything can be a fuel, you will need to tweak for many other variables along the way. Not every combo will work well with your containers, fragrances, etc. it is a long process. I have done this service for other companies in the past with a manufacturing partner based on very specific criteria of their exact fragrance and their exact containers. Nothing is a one size fits all.