EricofAZ

Might be worth trying your scent in 464 or C3. If you get the same result, then yeah, it might just not work well with soy.

I have noticed my LX wicks tend to produce soot just on a normal burn. I bought a candle a while back from Rustic Candles in Tucson (she uses LX and has been making candles for more years than the age of the earth I think). Hers sooted as well. Might be that it won't soot in the right wax with the right additives, but I gave up trying. As for the square braid vs. LX, with palm, I found the square braid to be the better wick. But you, my friend, have the joy of embarking on a testing spree to see what you like best, what works best for you, in your environment with your scents and sizes and additives and colors. I live in the desert and I do find a slight wick change depending on whether its summer or winter. It is also usually very dry here.

I ended up buying wick in rolls. I have way more than I can use, but if I want to experiment or test, I generally don't need to order anything. I'd be glad to share some. You may also find in the classifieds here that folks regularly have wicks for sale. If you post what you are In Search Of, someone might just respond.

Well, I only dabbled in soy. I liked the 464 and the C3 (and the 444) for scented candles. The 135 was terrible for me on the scented. Seemed to just gobble up the FO and had no HT or CT. Maybe someone else used the 135 with better formulas. So I thought about 135 as unscented. Yeah. But if I'm going to make unscented, I might go for the cheaper (and kosher approved?) 402. Haven't tried that yet. Its on my bucket list.

Liquid. I can pretty much mix any color I want. However, sometimes I see a solid that catches me the right way and I use it.

Welcome. I lived in SoCal for 12 years. San Diego is a great place. Glad to help you. Share your experience with us, we are glad to share our experience with you. Eric

The LX produces a very tall thin beautiful flame. I love it for that. It also produces a lot of soot. Black smoke off the top and into the ceiling. I don't love that.

yeah, heat guns.. glue guns... presto pots... different waxes... different jars... lots of liquid dyes or solid color thingies... additives... more wicks ... molds... more glass and new wicks to match the glass... Welcome to the $20K hobby. It is fun though.

Looks like Joe's Candle Fun tutorials. They're great. How do you like the oil wick system?

Well, I guess the question is how to salvage it. I would not heat to flash point as that's pretty high, but I might heat it back up and stir a lot and let it stay liquid for a few hours. You won't be able to purge it. I might also consider adding something to it to "blend" your own "limited edition" scent. Marketing is sometimes a challenge. You could market it as a nice smelling candle in the package with no scent during the burn. Some folks don't like scented burns. Tapers might lend well to that. Some folks don't want their taper to have much of a smell to them but do like something nice out of the package. Does the wax work with a taper shape and not drip? You might have a tough time wicking and may need a bobeche. But the firestarter idea is pretty good, even if you do have a huge quantity this year.

I never used the palm steric. If I read the candle safety website correctly (I think that's where I saw it), then 175 is max for a container. I gotta say, that is way too hot form me. 175 of a liquid can cause third degree burns in 3 seconds (the mcdonald's coffee case). I never let mine get hotter than can be held for a few seconds without feeling like it is burning. We can warn against it, but people are going to pick up a lit container and move it. Another reason why you don't want the container too hot is that there is a temperature differential between the upper area where the burn is and the lower area where the unmelted wax is. If that gradient is too harsh, you can crack the glass right there.

Hangup tends to catch up at the end. Keep that in mind. Twist your wick. I learned on this forum to take the wick and give it 6 rotations. It will rotate while burning down and that eliminates oval shape.

Firestarters. Melts.

Well, the time it takes to reach a full pool size is a bit controversial here. If you want your customers to like your candle, it needs to get to a burn pool fast. Yankme can get there in just over a half hour. Folks really don't want to wait much more than that. After all, this is the age of fast food. Generally speaking, the larger the pool, the better the throw. What I find challenging is getting to a large pool fast and then not having the pool increase over time. I know some folks want the tall LX flame and delightful burn and use a snuffer to put the wick out. They get to a large burn pool in a half hour and an hour later put it out. But there are folks who light these things and walk away and they want great throw, safety, no leakage, and no responsibility. I didn't write a note, but I think the small cotton was good for a start to finish (72 hour?) burn. Candle curled in on itself all the way down. But the melt pool does not get large right away, so it would pass the safety test and fail the fast food test.

The darker the color of the candle, the less the label stands out. But light colors work with it. I agree that you want your name to stand out, so my suggesting is leave the Better Scents font the way it is, and shrink "Candle Company" a bit. Maybe so that it is the same width at the "Better Scents" horizontally. Logos are good. Not necessary unless you want to brand your stuff. People do tend to associate images with products. I assume you have a warning label.

the ply wick does tend to work in palm So does the square braid. Palm burns hotter than paraffin or soy or beeswax. You will get a tall flame if you wick like the other waxes. Try the square braids and go smaller than you think for a test. If you are wicking a palm pillar, do what you need to burn on a 4 hour test. If you are wicking for a glass container, pay close attention to the glass temp. It is very easy and fast to get the glass temp out of control. All that said, if you can get the wick right, palm has a great hot throw and can be loaded heavier than paraffin.

Seems like we are a bunch of introverts unless we have a huge advertising budget. In Tucson, I thought there was only one candle maker with a brick and mortar store. She is know all the way to New York. Rustic Candles. Not well advertised. But people seem to "know" about her store. Well, this week I was out to lunch and found another chandler store. I didn't have time to go in, but I will do so soon. It looked like a lot of candle holders in the window. But, there are some companies that did go global. Yankme comes to mind. I feel for consumers who want to know the chandlers that are around that they can buy from. I do not think there is a global directory.

EO's are expensive, so if you can get some FO's that smell like Lavender, Clove, Ylang Ylang, Chamomile, Clary Sage, Basil and Lemon, you can add the orange. It will be a soothing smell. I do this in EO's for a blood pressure reducing candle and with the EO's it is pretty good. The FO's are not aroma oils so don't fake it. But it should be a soothing smell even if it is not medicinal. Or you can use a chocolate/orange FO and make some flower mold thingies to put on top of your container candles. Maybe Vanilla base or Italian Biscotti or Pink Sugar. The flower at the top is a hot throw lead in. The cold throw will really confuse and excite a person. Just a twist I do every now and then.

Nice, simple, elegant. I hope you have some good music going too. This looks like a great place to go to and get your mind off the day.

LOL. Scentsy is arrogant and proprietary. Think of buying a really complex computer printer with lots of parts and a great deal of engineering for $50. Then paying three times that for a bit of ink that needs refill later. That's the profit model for big companies that sell printers. No, they are not in the printer sales business. They are in the ink business. The way the printer companies keep ahead of the pirates who will sell clone ink is that the printer company will come out next year with a new model, discontinue the old model, discontinue the print cartridge and promote the new model. Folks who want to clone have a zillion printers to clone and can't do it feasibly. Folks who own a model that is out of date can't buy clone cartridges so they go back to the printer company. Scentsy can't do that. Its easy to clone tarts. Er...um... make good tarts of our own that do better. So Scentsy scares folks into buying their tarts. I learned something about neuroscience. People make decisions on a genetic level. We want to protect our genes, protect our offspring, and protect the prosperity of our offspring. So don't mess with me, my kids or my kid's future. Warranty is a protection. We feel protected when we have a "warranty." We want a car for our children that has a good "warranty" or a good safety rating. We would spend any amount of money for a car that we think will keep our daughters or sons safe in them. Take that protection away and we feel fear. (Long story as to why, but we do.) So there you have it. Scentsy can't change the technology, so they create a false protection (ever read the warranty? It doesn't mean jack) and threaten to take away the protection if you don't buy their refills. Ok, I will digress and tell you a story of how neuroscience was used in advertising many years ago. Folgers thought they had the best coffee in the USA and were number 17 on the charts. They hired a guy from France that understood neuroscience. He looked at the logo and advertising "Tastes Good" Remember that? Image of a coffee cup and advertising that it tasted good? He watched people distort their face, frown and wrinkle their nose when they drank coffee and came to the conclusion that Americans HATE the taste of coffee. So why do we drink it? Because when we were babies we smelled it. Our mothers held us in the morning and drank coffee and we smelled it and that is when we felt the safest. We associate the smell of coffee with safety. So the smell is what he zeroed in on. The logo was changed to a coffee cup with a wisp coming from it and the slogan to "Smells Good" and Folgers went to #2 on sales. Tap into our fears and safety and you have a powerful advertisement campaign. Create safety (warranty) and take it away (you didn't use our tarts) and you have neuroscience not only selling the product but folks going to arguments and fist fights over it. Now, everyone, if you look up in this thread at the comments, you will see some passion and emotion. How do you think the passion and emotion was ignited over such a simple subject? Well, there is more to neuroscience, but you are seeing it in action.

I have to make a huge confession here. Sometimes I consider melts to be a way of using leftover wax (like firestarters). I don't mean residue from candle tests. I mean when I break up a slab of wax and make pillars or whatnot and have a few ounces left over and don't want to fire up the presto for it. That goes in a bin. Same with some excess container wax. Eventually my bin is full of unused wax. Then I start a presto pot for tarts and use 2 ounces per pound of FO. I know this is not scientific. And at some level, it is hit and miss, especially if I am using some FO that is also also maybe not enough left to make a batch of pillars or containers. Sometimes I do "design" a tart. I use at least a 125 degree melt point wax. Usually something from China like they sell at General Wax in LA. If you really want a creamy look, consider soy. Any soy. Much creamier than Paraffin.

I have never tried Scentsy either. Some day I might just for reference. They have great marketing and from what I can tell, very aggressive marketers that make claims a bit beyond what is acceptable at this forum. I recently learned that some of my work colleagues didn't know what tarts were but when I said Scentsy, they understood. Over the years, this brand has come up on this board a lot. The general opinion is that a good chandler can make a better tart than Scentsy. We just had a tart swap in the swap forum. That's a good way to find out if your stuff is good and what others are doing. Funny how folks think of themselves (me included). Some think they have the best in the world. Some think they are average. Some just hope that their stuff is acceptable. None of that is an indication. I've seen great stuff from great people and great stuff from folks who think they are just barely entry level. And vise versa. You will know when you join a swap and try out what you get.

I'm not much with soy. I did play with 464 a bit and kinda liked it. Maybe some day I'll go back. Candybee has some good observations and advice. If you tell us how thick it is, not how tall, and what the temperature of your glass is towards the end of the burn, we might be able to help. I rather suspect that it is underwicked, but not sure. Sometimes wax on the side "catches up" at the end. And sometimes the flicker inside a residue candle can be entertaining.

I've used all those waxes and if you are losing your J50 supplier, IMHO, the J223 is going to be closer than the Harmony. I never really ever saw much difference between 4633 and 4636. J223 was supposed to hold more FO than J5O but they were both about the same. I never tried J225, it was supposed to be better but I think it was short lived. When I tested with 4630, I found myself diluting with paraffin of about the same melt point that had no additives and I was a bit happier with it. My recollection is that the Harmony is over saturated with additives, but that's just me. I'm sure you know that the first two digits of the IGI line are supposed to group the wax closely to one another so there should be little in variation. We are talking about all 4600 series wax here.

You might need to add some microcrystaline additive to make the wax more pliable for carving. There are only a few wax recommendations. If you go to www.candlefun.com the guy has kits and supplies but his prices are a bit high. IGI 1250 is recommended by www.candlemaking.com IGI 1343 is recommended by www.lonestarcandlesupply.com I use 1343 and have added microcrystaline to hold the heat and make it tackier when I stick the slices to the candle. You do not want a brittle wax. Brittle is not only hard to work with, it will fall apart if hit or touched roughly afterwords. Dipping is different than cut/curl. Lots of folks dip to make tapers. If you are going to cut and curl or carve, you have some additional issues to deal with such has getting all the cuts made while the wax is still hot. I'm not sure I agree about the concern over hot wax stripping off the layer under. That depends on how long you leave it in the dip. I keep my wax around 175 ish and dip pretty fast three times then dip in water, then dip three times fast with the next color, then dip in water then 3 times with the next color, etc. I just want the water to cool the outside layer, not the entire candle, so the water dip is fast. You have already identified the classic star mold. If it is a tapered star mold, even better. The price of $50 doesn't sound that unreasonable. Some folks use floor wax for glazing, but it has to be pretty thick. As for a heater, I found that a restaurant cooker/warmer is great. I found one like this that had 6 round pots about 8 inches deep and 5 inches in diameter. http://www.webstaurantstore.com/apw-wyott-12-x-27-cw-3a-4-3-size-countertop-food-cooker-120v/135CW3A%20%20%20%20%20120.html If I decide to make larger candles, I am going to consider a bunch of these.... http://www.webstaurantstore.com/avantco-w300bk-6-qt-round-black-countertop-food-warmer-110v-300w/177W300BK.html There is a difference between a food warmer and a food cooker/warmer. The cooker/warmer will melt your wax pretty fast because it is designed to reach higher temperatures by boiling the water in the vat where the canisters are located. But I found that once melted, I was turning the temp down to the warmer range so I think just the warmer might be ok if cost is an issue and time is not, not sure. I bought a few of the DVD's at candlefun. Number 1 kinda lays it out for you as to what to do. The rest are just technique to make the candles they show you in the pictures.