EricofAZ

I don't know what wick was used here, but I've had concerns that a lot of folks overwick their tealights. TL 10's are a good starting place. Very few wicks are that small. I see charts that talk about zinc 28's and PK13's and Eco 1's for tealights. Those are way too big.

Well, I use the same jar. With 4786 and a blend of Genwax 128, the HTP 73 works the best for me. Some hang, catches up. For the Harmony/Genwax, I found a lighter wick was better and the CD8 seemed to be the winner. I'm not sure about 6006. I only used that a little bit and not in the status jar. My gut would tell me to try an ECO 2 and see how it goes from there.

Well.......................... long sigh................. It gets worse. You could be like me and put all those supplies in storage and spend $93/month to warehouse the girlfriend's oversized couch and all the candle supplies. Now I get to pay for a hobby that I don't really have. I'll have to write to the producers of 2 1/2 Men and ask how they would handle it.

Very attractive!

I've been able to get 3 oz pp in a paraffin blend for tarts. Don't try to burn that though, it will 'shroom every wick on the market. I haven't tested the tarts too much but it seems the higher FO load only makes for a stronger sent, but doesn't last much longer than the lighter FO load. I'm guessing that the MP of the wax and the temp of the warmer has a lot to do with how long it lasts.

I learned that keeping some coffee beans handy is important, it clears the nose when sniffing multiple samples. The guys at snowdriftfarm.com had this set up in the lobby and it works.

I've got three jars that I stick with. I like the tureens (despite that they are hard to wick). I really like the balmoral jars because they have a great hot throw and are on sale (shipping sale) from time to time. And I like the status jars because they are very affordable from generalwax. Those are the mainstays. I do play around with some dollar store jars from time to time. I look for a wide base so they don't tip and a wide melt pool for HT. A slight neck on the jar seems to get a good air circulation (balmoral type). For some reason, the masons have not caught my eye too much even though they are cheap and easy to buy locally.

I bought a 3 ounce shot glass that after the tare is set, seems to just barely hold 2 oz of FO's. There is a little variation between the FO's and EO's but just what I call a negligeable amount. I have a sticker on the side that is marked off in 5 gram increments and I've weighed enough FO's to feel comfortable with the markings. So I just fill to the line that I want and dump it in the presto. If I have any FO's that seem thicker or thinner than normal, I go back to weighing, but that's rare. EO's are pretty light in viscosity compared to FO's, but they seem to come out about the same on the markings and the weight.

LOL, yeah, I'm about at Robert's dollar amount. I had no idea it was going to be that spendy when I started out, but hey, its fun and I've had more expensive hobbies. I'd like to see a sample "tester check sheet" because it is easy to find folks to test, hard to find folks who know what to look for and how to report back. Darrell, I'd be willing to swap you if you like. What do you want tested?

All my leftover wax goes in a plastic shoe box and when its full I toss it in the presto and make firestarters.

RJ, one thing to take into consideration is how many times you light the wick and how many times you clean the top of the wick. You mentioned upper and lower but I assume you are burning more than twice start to finish. I assume you are burning 4 hours at a time or more for a power burn. For example, first time you light it, expect the wick to perform badly. It has to form the pool and draw the wax and saturate itself. That all happens on the first burn and test vary depending on whether the wick is raw, primes on the outer layer only, or primed to the core. The second burn should start to be more stable. Doesn't matter if the wick is primed with the wax in your candle (from a raw wick) or from 200 degree micro wax, it all mixes at the base of the flame. So you mentioned two sets of notes. Top half and bottom half. I absolutely discard the first burn for the reasons above. All I want to know about the first burn is that is works and doesn't blowtorch or die out or get the glass too hot. That's it. If the rest of the burns are following the pattern that the lower they get in the glass, the deeper the melt gets, that's to be expected. Sounds like you had a reversal. So why? What would cause that? Too deep of a glass to get air to the wick? One of those funky shapes that expands diameter at the bottom? Didn't mix the FO well enough (stir a couple of minutes) or did something settle out in your mix that caused the lower portion of the candle to be a different mixture than the upper portion? Lots of variables that can cause this to happen, but they are pretty easy to spot.

Cooler and hotter are terms of art. The variables have to be entered. If the flame diameter is the same between a cotton and a zinc, then the zinc is cooler. Here's why... Take any wick that sucks up the wax and gives it the ability to burn. The wax is hot and liquid and vapors off of the material and burns. If the core is cotton, then the entire wick is drawing wax. Lets say both wicks are 2mm in diameter. The cotton core has 2 mm of material that will draw the wax and help it to burn. It has a decent rate of consumption (ROC) which is pretty stable. Maybe, lets, say, it consumes .1 ounce per hour. Now lets find a zinc wick that has the same diameter. The core is metal. The outer shell is wicking material for the wax. It will not draw as much wax and hence, burn cooler than the cotton core. It will have a lower ROC. So lets say you choose a zinc wick that has the same ROC meaning that it draws the same amount of wax per hour as the cotton core. I will bet you a nickle that it is a larger diameter wick held side by side as the cotton core, but it will also burn at about the same temp, give or take a hundred degrees. A wick will burn at around 2500 degrees depending on where it is measured and what the wax is. So a hundred degrees here or there is really not relevant to tealights. It comes into play only when sorting out flame diameter and FO load, which is really advanced stuff and testing for the perfectionist. The recalls are sometimes over emphasized. Last recall that I looked at was ONE tealight that deformed out of SEVEN MILLION. Not bad. If your plastic is deforming and catching fire, you have it way overwicked and zinc isn't your answer. A much smaller wick is your answer. I use TL 10 and TL 15 in my tealights. Sometimes HTP 13, though they are hard to find and pretty hot for most wax (except maybe high melt point wax). There is no zinc that I would use in a tealight. The smallest zinc that is on the market is too hot for my use. Same with cotton core.

So it sounds like the consensus is that a higher temp focused torch is better than a lower temp diffused heat gun. Ok, I can get my head wrapped around that and do understand why it may "zap" the tops without heating up the glass as much as the heat gun would. I think I tried this a while back and darkened the wick. How do you get the tops near the wick done without browning the wick?

I started to make these before I had to dismantle my man cave (long story). The tutorial that Vickie posted is great to try. I tried to embed stuff but I can't get a clear enough wax to make it worth while so anything that you embed should be artistically designed to merely shadow or block light, not anything complex that you plan on making visible for color and depth, just shadow and only very light color. Outside you can decal and then glaze for more vibrant detail.

Which is why I buy raw wicks and tabs that match the wick and are high enough for the application and crimp them myself. Cheaper by far but more labor. Pick your poison.

just a word to the wise. Everyone here is sincere, however, there are internet robot programs that search for email addresses and pick up on the ones above in blue. The html code makes it blue and hyperlinked if you type in your email. Best way to defeat this and avoid spam is to defeat the code by breaking up your email into text that the 'bots don't read and makes real people read and address you personally. An example is bob at gmail.com Notice that the @ was replaced with "at" and spaces entered in between bob and gmail. No blue hyperlink. Yeah, you have spam filters. Sure. They are defeated with each new wave of nerd hacking so please don't think that you are safe by providing a hyperlink email on the net.

Raw the cotton core (44-28-18) are almost round in shape and the HTP's are closer to a flat or rectangular shape. Primed they could be about any shape but I think they tend to still have that distinction. If you can see the raw wick inside the prime wax, the HTP probably has a dark brown thread in it and the cotton cores do not. You should know after a test burn. The cotton core will be round and straight and the HTP should be rectangular and curl.

Sounds good to me. If you use the rule of thumb that the melt pool should progress on inch per hour, then you need 3 hours to get a 3 inch diameter pool. The problem with larger containers (like tureen jars) is that candle consumers want to smell the scent in about a half hour or so and that means a faster progressing melt pool. So I tend to try to get a wick that will create a FMP in under an hour while not causing overheating even on a power burn. Tough to do, but with all the wicks out there, the possibilities do exist. Soy seems to lend better to this process than paraffin, but paraffin works with more FO's than soy does.

I agree that the heat has to keep moving. I was just looking at the flash point of IGI 4700 series wax and it is 190 degrees. The wax at that temp won't burn all by itself, but I think when you add an open flame, the possibility exists. Plus a lot of FO's have lower flash points. I can see where a focused heat source may in some situations be better than a larger diffused heat source. Possibly the cracking of glass may be more likely with a heat gun improperly used than a small torch, but I still think open flame that might be 4000 degrees at the tip is a bit uncomfortable for me to do. By the way, flash point is the temperature at which a liquid can form an ignitable vapor. It is not the same as the fire point. Just because you have a vapor doesn't mean it will light off ---- unless you apply a flame. I'm not saying that the wax will light off if you use a food torch. It shouldn't if you keep the flame moving. Heck, it needs to be a stable burn with a wick flame. I'm just not sure I want to make a practice of putting a high temp focused flame to the wax. I think the food torch (butane?) burns much hotter than a candle wick flame.

Ok, that takes care of the glass problem, but still leaves the open flame/wick problem to contend with. I don't like open flames for touching up candle tops and prefer to avoid them. Gas stoves with cooking pots designed to handle the open flame, or back yard barbeque are the exceptions (oh, and a nice fireplace that is designed for the job). It does sound, though, like that person has their technique down pat. I just hope it never goes wrong.

There are a lot of reasons why melting wax in a pot directly on a burner is a bad idea. The fire issue is fire, of course. Another is that burners tend to heat the pot from the bottom and that causes the wax to melt and expand which can blow the top of the wax off causing a splatter (and a fire). Presto pots also heat from the bottom, but the heat tends to creep up the sides as well. Regular candle melters are designed to heat from the sides and that's the best. Be careful about homemade double boilers. I read a tutorial about just bringing a pot of water to boil and putting the pour pot inside that. Well, if the pour pot sits on the bottom of the water pot, its getting direct heat on the bottom (and only a little on the sides in comparison) which leads to bottom melting and spectacular whale blows on the top. If the pour pot will suspend in the boiling water, that's better. Some have a handle and hook onto a deeper water pot. Be careful though to not spill the wax into the boiling water. It can boil over and that will put wax in contact with the burner. I had one fire from that. I was melting wax in a glass container that I wanted remove and the bottom of the container cracked causing the wax inside to run out into the boiling water. Boiled over and the burner lit it the little bit that touched the coils. It was very little so I slid the pot (which was not on fire, only boiling) to a cold burner and let the pot water stop boiling and the burner fire burned itself out which it did in a few seconds. Tossing a wet rag over a hot burner might have worked and it might have just dried the rag and lit that on fire (wet rag is better suited for a pot fire), so I had a fire extinguisher in hand which I think is the better way for that kind of fire where the wax is on the burner and aflame. Fortunately, as I said, there was very little wax and it burned itself out quickly. So I'm pretty much not using the double pot method any more for anything. That said, I have used food warmers to set an already melted pour pot on to keep it warm. I have one of the GE units mentioned above from Walmart. I would never use that to melt wax, but keeping already melted wax warm seemed to work. However, the reason I was doing that was to dip candles in and I quickly decided that the rules of exposure were against me. (Rules of Exposure say that the more you expose yourself to a potentially dangerous situation, the more likely it is that you will experience that situation. ie, jaywalk enough and eventually you're going to get hit.) So to make the cut/carve candles, I went to a Norco full size food warmer/cooker and bought one of the 6 pot lids and pot arrangements. The steam will melt the wax pots from the sides pretty fast, about 45 minutes from fully hardened wax, and no spewing. A spill just goes in the water tray and the heat source is contained in a way that wax won't easily get to. Plus, the rheostat lets me control the wax temp very well.

Great way to light a wick, or turn it brown/black. I think customers would be turned off if the wick was discolored. Also, the heat differential on the glass between the area where the glass is filled with wax and the area where the glass is filled with air can easily cause the upper part of the glass to expand faster than the lower part which = breakage. So I like a heat gun and I use it on the outside to warm the glass all the way around a bit to minimize this problem. Keep the heat gun under 600 degrees and just warm a bit longer, I think that to be safer.

Crystals are the pride and joy of Palm wax. The cracking is possibly because it is cooling too fast. Also, possibly from manipulating the wax when you take it out of the mold? It is a bit brittle. Slow down the cooling after you pour and don't refrigerate. The palm should hold without cracking and should also grow larger crystals. Also, I think your temp is too high in the pot. I don't take Palm up near that high.

If I have pourable wax I consider clamshells or portion cups. I try to label them. If the wax is not good for that purpose, it goes in an ice cube tray and when full, goes in a bin that later becomes material for firestarters.

Definitely bad customer service. I ordered several different slabs from the candlesource and it came unmarked. I had to figure out which was which. It is bad enough that a supplier charges more for wax and shipping than most candles cost in the store, but to increase my labor by not marking is worse. Add to that your insult of making you pick the dirt out of it and I'd be ripping the supplier a new one. In a polite sort of way.