EricofAZ

Speaking of odd, my sister recently suggested a beer and pizza FO for young men in dorm rooms at college. She thought it was one of her silly jokes until I showed her a beer scented gel in a beer mug that looked like beer and convinced her that I was sure to find a pizza food FO to mix with it.

I'm looking for some good recipes for making gel wax. Most say mineral oil and resin. Well, I can get mineral oil easy enough, but what kind of resin?

Honeydew Melon is one of my favorites. I like test burning those one. Lately it has been musk scents that I like. Armani Mania, Egyptian Musk, etc.

I have to chuckle a little bit. A pound is 16 ounces. A pound is a pound. A pound of air is 16 ounces. A pound of lead is 16 ounces. By volume, a pound of lead is much smaller than a pound of air. As I recall, just a small couple of ice cube sizes of lead is a pound and a column of air that is one inch in diameter and 1/7th the height of the atmosphere is also about a pound. Most manufacturers that make measuring cups assume H20 as the measure. So a pound of H20 is measured to a certain level in teaspoons, tablespoons, cups, quarts, gallons, etc. A pound of FO and a pound of wax are not the same as a pound of H20. If you weigh, you will always get it right. If you measure, you need to know what you are measuring it against and whether or not the measuring device is accurate. FO might be heavier or lighter by volume depending on the content. It will always weigh 16 ounces per pound, but might measure differently depending on the FO. Same with wax. Always weigh.

Actually, I just set the smaller wick in a pillar and let it burn for 12 hours. The pool was wide enough and did not spill so that's a win/win, but the flame was pretty small, so small that there was barely any showing of it. It barely burned one ounce in the 12 hours. I let it cool and re-lit it today and the flame is quite acceptable. Go figure. I can re-wick easy enough. These things pull out if you tug hard enough. I put most of my testing into the notion of wicking for the wax and size and burn time. No soot, good pool, 4 hour average (50 percent overrun). To me, a tall flame is delightful and that's what we get from Rustic Candles which is a local (and very long time and experienced) candle maker. Smaller flames make sense for the candle impaired of the world who might buy one. No flame makes more sense, that's why they are candle impaired. Is this a trend that buyers like smaller flames?

Well, if you're talking about vertical streaks, sometimes I pour some scented wax without colorant into the mold - just a little - and let some run down the sides from the pour scoop. I don't let it harden all the way because the rest of the wax does need to bond well, but when it is cool and starting to harden I then pour some more with a light color, allowing some to run down the sides. Then more color, etc. Eventually it ends up in vertical streaks with layered colors.

The flame settles down about a half hour after lighting it. The first half hour or maybe 15 minutes and its high. After that, when the pool gets going, the flame gets wider and shorter. So the photo above is just after restarting the candle when I got home from the office. How does this look? I have one size smaller wick to use but I thought it tended to just tunnel too much.

Some mostly IGI 4625 pillars. It is NOT a one pour wax, in some cases 4 pours. However, I think it burns just fine. Burn times of 2 to 6 hours center and bring the sides down. Under 2 and it tunnels. Over 6 or 7 and it spills. I am pleased with the wick selection. Good tall flame most of the time. Some mushrooming that needs to be trimmed but does not seem to interfere with the burn. Virtually no sooting. Maybe just a slight bit when draft hits it. Hang tag is just a business card with the warning information on the back side. There's room on the tag for a price. The pipe cleaner can be opened up to add additional tags if desired.

So I totally forgot that one of my co-workers was testing an older CB135 soy mason jar candle. She took it a couple of months ago and brought it back yesterday. She burned it for all of a couple of hours and was very disappointed. The CT was fine. When she first lit it off the HT was fine. Then it fizzled out as for HT. She said she only smelled the FO if she stuck her nose right to the candle. I told her that I had discontinued the CB135 for that very reason.

My experience with 50/50 and 80/20 etc, is that it needs to be wicked in between the two. So if you would use a CD 14 with the paraffin and CD10 with the soy, then a CD12 might be a good starting point. Of course, with vybar wicking up seems to be worth while so if I did a 50/50 and added vybar, I'd probably go with the CD14. For me, this was on 3" diameter containers in wide mouth mason jars. I'm sure the melt pool diameter will also dictate your wick choice.

A business license is usually a local gov't requirement. You need not look beyond the name of the area where you live. If you run the business in the incorporated city of xxx, then go to the city hall to find out what the requirements are. If no city, and you are in the county, go to the clerk of the county board. Some cities have harsher requirements than others. Some just want to sell the paper and get the fee. Some want to issue a "certificate of occupancy" that requires that you pay for the roadway improvements for a left turn bay into your store.

I was surprised that C3 did so well both CT and HT. 444 and 464 were right behind. If I go back to mixing soy, I'll probably use C3.

I'm thinking of buying an aviation heat gun. http://cgi.ebay.com/Master-Appliance-HG-301A-Heat-Gun-AVIATION-AIRCRAFT-/330482968902?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item4cf251e946 Notice the rotating vent for the intake fan. You can set the temperature and reduce the air speed of the fan as you like, avoiding that nasty "blow it all over the room" effect. I used these in the 80's when I was in aircraft maintenance school and they did a good job of variable temperature/speed for shrinking fabric on fabric aircraft. They get very hot very fast, which I think is a plus for smoothing tops quickly. I lit a hangar on fire one time but that's a story for another day. It had something to do with using nitrate dope instead of butyrate and two dead CO2 extinguishers and lots of running to find a good CO2 extinguisher. :tiptoe:

9 hours is about right for a deeper tea light mold. I get about 7 hours out of a half ounce and the 3/4 inch deep tealight molds hold about .7 ounces. vybar increases the burn time. The scent throw is not very much because of the small pool diameter. I've decided not to make tealights for profit. There are too many packages at the dollar store. However, I do think that tealights are good for "samples" if folks want to know what a particular scent is like. I've used some premade tabbed wicks from ebay for the tealights and they work just fine. At the moment, I can't find my tealight wicks. I was hoping to give you a number. I think they are like 32P zinc?

Or buy a lot of one ounce FO's from our classified section as a gift. I bet you could put together a nice candle kit, way better than anything on ebay.

The wax at Michaels is from Yadley in Riverside, CA. They have their own formulas and do not generally sell to the public. They have also selected their wicks for their wax. My very first candles were with that stuff. Quite expensive, but easily available over the counter. If they don't mind paying $5/pound for paraffin and 10 times what the wicks and tabs are worth, they will likely be able to make a good candle. Just follow the formulas. There are a few books there too that have formula's in them. I wasted a lot of money on the professional wax believing bogus ads like "CB-135 with Superior Scent Throw," etc. Now that I am settling down with a few IGI brands and palm and bees wax formulas, its looking good. But man, all that money spent on misrepresented pro stuff could have bought a lot of stuff from Michaels. I would not buy fragrances from Michaels. The Yadley FO's are too weak and too expensive. Better to get FO's from any of the preferred sellers that our forum members use.

I've mixed some soy with GG for containers with good results, but when I use paraffin, I get a powder that crumbles when it cools. Soot is a wick selection issue more than anything else. I found LX wicks sooting much more than CD's or RRD's.

Well... I agree that LLC is a good entity to look into, and in today's tax world, likely better than a corporation with an s-election. (Research dividends vs. draws and bonuses.) Maybe this can shed more light on the subject? An LLC is not insurance. Insurance is insurance. Insurance with good coverage that correctly addresses the commercial and personal nature of your business is necessary. An LLC can be sued. You cannot defend your LLC personally. Corporations must hire an attorney to defend. LLC's are easier to maintain than Corporations and come with pretty much the same corporate protections. However, piercing the corporate vail to get to the owners is sometimes easier in LLC's because most LLC members don't really separate the business well. They end up co-mingling somewhere along the line. It starts to look like an alter ego. There is no way to shield yourself from litigation. There are ways to protect yourself and your family and personal assets. Setting up an LLC is just the beginning. Running it like a corporation is also important. Having a good insurance policy is also important. Giving adequate warnings is also very important. Above all, a good product is primary. If your product never causes a problem, then you have nothing to be concerned about. If your product causes a problem, the first line of defense is your warning labels and the user's experience with similar products. Your insurance will provide an attorney and I am willing to bet that the attorney is going to work overtime to make sure the carrier doesn't get nailed. You are protected to your policy limits. You are also protected to the limits of your State and Federal debt protection laws. In Arizona, for example, a home is protected up to $150K in equity. If you have no assets beyond the protection laws, then even if you did make a bad product, you're probably going to be fine. I'm not saying that candlemakers are immune from litigation, just that it is tough to sue and make it stick. There are basically two kinds of actions that can be brought against candlemakers that I can think of. One is a contract action. The candle didn't perform as contracted and / or was built in an unworkmanlike manner. There are no punitive damages on contracts. I'm wondering if there are any cases out there where someone thought the candle didn't work and sued. Oh, maybe some large corporate shipping issues, but, Joe Blow bought a candle and it didn't light so he sued? Another is tort. Tort requires 4 failures to stick against the candle maker. 1) There has to be a duty. Well, there are some duties like duty to warn, duty to test and make a good product, etc. 2) Failure of that duty. If you did what is industry standard, maybe you're OK. If you blew off the duty to test, etc, then maybe there's a failure? 3) Damages. There has to be some damage to the user. Burned finger, house, etc. 4) Causation. This is the kicker. The cause of the damages has to be a failure of the duty. If the causation is not a failure of the duty, then the lawsuit should be dismissed. Example: Buyer purchases a candle and the candle has a warning tag that warns against burning it near flammable objects and leaving it unattended. Buyer puts it near the curtains, or under a wood shelf, and goes into another room, or goes outside to walk the dog. Curtains/shelf catch fire. Duty to warn was complied with and there does not appear to be a breach. The candle performed as expected and was mishandled. Candlemaker should be able to get the lawsuit dismissed, but it will cost for the attorney. That's why having insurance is good. Insurance carrier pays the attorney and hopefully doesn't jack your rates since you were not liable. Example: Buyer purchases a candle that is "quadruple scented" and lights it off. Warning says to attend the candle and not use water. Excess FO was bought at dollar store and has alcohol in it. Alcohol lights off, candle blows up. Duty to follow a workmanlike manner in building the candle was breached and a direct cause of the damages despite the warning. Lawsuit goes to a jury. Your attorney does his/her best to get it dismissed by offering policy limits in exchange for a release. Hope that helps. Same disclaimer, this is not legal advice. Go see your local attorney for that.

Does not work well with firefox. Text overlaps. Not everyone is a Dollar Bill lover. Micro$oft has a good browser, but if you cater only to Micro$oft, then the rest of the world that doesn't may find your site problematic. Just my observation. Craftserver works fine on Firefox.

Um, I did use EO's in a mix. 75 percent paraffin and 25 percent CB135. Clary Sage, Lavender, Ylang Ylang, Orange, Lemon. All mixed and about an ounce for a half pound container. It was pretty good. I'm going to try it again with a different soy, or stay with straight paraffin. Perhaps the word horrific better describes my feelings about CB135.

I bought a case of CB135 incorrectly believing what the company said about "Good" throw. Yeah, good when you are standing over it like you noticed. I came to realize that it had virtually no HT at all even when saturated to the max with scent. You won't find me using that wax any more and the folks who sell it touting it as a "Good" throw wax are, IMHO, not accurate. By the way, did I mention that I really think CB135 is a horrid choice for scented candles? If not, let me say that I really think CB135 is a horrid choice for scented candles.

I got away from straight paraffin and additives and went to the blends. Glad I only bought a slab of each. I'm inclined to return to the base paraffin and add my own stuff to it again. I do have to say, I like the way IGI 1274 looks and performs so I think I'll stay with that in my containers and get rid of the 6006 and 4686. Also, I like the way the 4625 burns in a 3" pillar without additives (I think IGI already has some vybar in it.)

Sounds like her price of $350 is reasonable.

The presto pot is like $60 on ebay with $10 shipping. I bought one. $ 65 or so for the 50 pound starburst palm including her shipping cost. $20 including shipping for the soy. Two blocks of mottled wax is about $40 including her shipping cost. 15 bottles of half ounce dye should be around $50 bucks. Dye chips can be expensive. Figure another $100 bucks. 20 bottles of FO, um, what size? If one pound which is pretty average, $18 per bottle including shipping. So, she probably does have about $610 if she was careful and less if she made good deals. More if she didn't know where to buy. Her claim of $750 is within the ballpark of what folks might end up investing. You can get the same with careful planning for about $550. That includes shipping. I assume she wants to charge you to ship her stuff to you (double shipping). So, IMHO, a price for you would be $450 including shipping at the most, or $350 plus reasonable shipping at the most, if you want to buy her out. As for picking and choosing, if I were her, it would be a package deal or nothing. She won't sell her dye chips, etc, unless she is an ebay expert.

I bought some Dragon's Blood from a seller here on the forum. Tonysfragranceoils, which I think is no longer in business. Very strong. I made a pillar and the CT is so strong I had to put it outside. I gave it to a co-worker who had to do the same. We're a bit afraid to light it. I made another pillar with less scent, less than an ounce per pound, and the CT is normal compared to other candles. Well, a little strong, but not nasty strong.