EricofAZ

I always wondered why frozen pizza tasted like cardboard. Now I know. Ok, national guidelines are good and following them is good. So is following the wax manufacturer's recommendations. Looks like candles.org has a suggestion to add manufacturer guidelines in addition to the three basic rules. http://www.candles.org/safety_label.html I think printing the candles.org website url on the label is a good idea for those who want to learn more. To me, leaving out anything from the national standards is bad. Adding more information should be helpful, I would think.

The wax melter may be commercial quality or not. There's a pretty big price difference on those. $200 might be generous or not. What is a box of wax? 50 lbs or 10 lbs?

I have some Bert's Sandalwood and Royal Aromatics Arabian Sandalwood. The Bert's is strong as always. OOB it has a bit of an earthy smell (musky) and I like it. CT after curing is about the same. It has the viscosity of any oil, runny. The RA Arabian Sandalwood is thick and I thought was starting to go bad. The seller said it came that way. OOB it is more musky. I don't want to say notes of pine in the Bert's but then again maybe I do. Not so in the Arabian. I have not burned either for HT yet.

Ok, the HT results. Unfortunately, puddy tat and I are the only testers. Ms. Puddy had no objection to any. I don't have a clear winner but there is a clear LOOSER! drum roll please........ ............ Yup, my not so favorite, CB-135 is the absolute clear loser! The HT didn't throw more than a few feet. The rest were not so clear as to what order i should put them in. None were even close to paraffin or palm throw. I want to pick the 444 as the strongest. It filled the hallway and my sitting area at the computer desk. Both about 4 feet away. Not much further though. The 464 was kinda OK in the hallway and faintly at the computer desk, so was the C3. Unfortunately, I had to burn the C3 for two nights, last night and tonight. Last night I got distracted and made some containers so my nose was not the best. Tonight the C3 is about burned down and likely not very fragrant. So, unfortunately, I can't place where C3 should go. I suspect it was pretty strong. Some day maybe I'll do it again with better controls. I have to say that the palm and paraffin sometimes are so strong I have to put them out. Not so with the soy.

Right, there has to be negligence to make the suit stick. Negligence has 4 parts. Duty, breach, causation and damages. My warning does say not to move the candle while lit and wait for it to cool. Stella is around, she had the skin grafts. Wickipedia has some interesting stuff about that McDonald's Coffee Case and I checked it out, they got it right. 700 prior burn victims? Whoa! But I digress.

I think the numbers are confusing. One inch in diameter per hour maybe, but as for depth once the pool reaches the container wall, I shoot for 1/4 inch depth only. That's enough to clean the sides. And I agree, it is good to find a place to test burn for long periods because someone is going to do it by mistake. I try to wick so that once a FMP is reached, the depth remains the same over time and hope that the candle does reach FMP well before the 4 hour mark. To me, a great candle reaches FMP in about two hours and holds at 1/4 inch depth and wall to wall diameter for the life of the candle.

Was it a stand-alone policy or just a rider on the homeowner insurance?

I think we have two lines of thought in this thread. One about how best to put out a fire and the other about liability and labels. That's fine. Both are of interest to me. I'm not a fire fighter, however, I have had some training for aviation and nautical fires. One day when I was flying a helicopter, I had a radio explode and light fire to the instrument panel so I've also experienced the situations (and I burned my room down when I was a kid, by accident). Anything that lowers the temperature and/or removes the oxygen (preferably both) should extinguish a fire. Wax and oil can re-light easily if they remain hot and the O2 is re-introduced (smothering then removing the towel, etc). Water stream into the molten wax does not cool fast enough because the water steams at 212 degrees and the wax fire is much hotter, thus taking the liquid and vapor wax and expanding it with the steaming water - POOF! As for the legalities, I think warning labels need to be effective. There is ample reason to warn against using water (despite the one wax company above that correctly points out that a mist of water is beneficial). What bothers me is that everyone has water and thinks of water right away since we see it on every firefighter show on TV. Not everyone has a fire extinguisher or smoke alarm and if I tell these folks that they can't use the one thing they have, well, then what? By providing the website, and warning and giving options, I think the label becomes a better label. I would be interested in the opinion of any attorney that disagrees with this, or anyone who wrote a better label and had it go against them.

I found it. When in doubt, read the directions. Astorlite J223 = EXTINGUISHING MEDIA: Carbon dioxide, dry chemical or fine water spray. Avoid water stream on molten burning material as it may scatter and spread the fire. Candlewic's Smooth Pillar Blend = 5. FIRE FIGHTING MEASURES Extinguishing Media: Small fires: CO2 or dry chemical Large fires: Foam Candlewic's Soy125 = SECTION IV - FIRE AND EXPLOSION HAZARD DATA: Flash Point: Above 6000FFire Point: Above 6750F Extinguishing Media: Foam, Dry Chemical, CO2 Special fire fighting procedures: Avoid use of water in extinguishing fires. I read a bunch more and it looks like Powder (dry chem) or CO2 are the preferred. Foam for larger fires. So I'll have on my labels "In case of wax fire, extinguish with Dry Powder or CO2 Extinguisher, do NOT use water." I also put on my labels www.candles.org/safety.html I doubt that anyone has a foam extinguisher at home. Most of the available are dry powder or CO2.

I'm thinking more in terms of a warning label. It is fine to tell someone what not to do "Don't extinguish with water." But I think a warning label should be in the positive, ie, tell people what they should do.

Ok, so candle wax fires are pretty spectacular at times. Water, in small quantities, steams and throws the oil into the air with the flame. Bad. What is best to extinguish a candle fire? Its one thing to say "don't use water" on the warning label, but I'd like to say what the person should use. CO2? That cools, but it also tends to blow hard and spread the wax. Powder? I understand there are several kinds of powder extinguishers that can be purchased. Powder is recommended for electrical fires. Powders don't tend to blow has hard out of the nozzle, they just move the O2 away without any cooling action. But I think they don't spread the wax as much. Thoughts?

So I bought some IGI 6006, a 10 pound slab, for testing. This stuff was oily out of the bag. Slippery, fell on the floor. Picking it up was like grabbing watermelon seeds. Lonestar says it is a one pour wax but that's not what I experienced. I had pits in the container so I poked it near the wick and poured a second. Pits opened up again. I can't think of a single reason why this wax would be of value. It is almost liquid at Arizona room temperature. Does anyone use it and if so, what do you like about it? It certainly is not along the lines of the characteristics that Lonestar said..... This soft, low-shrink container wax was originally produced by Dussek Campbell and then BP under the blend number 5766. It is now produced by IGI under the formula #6006. Creamy in appearance, this wax needs no additives other than fragrance and color. Holds average amount of fragrance oil. Fragrance oil retention of 6% is typical. Good scent throw. Good burn characteristics. Low shrinkage means that a re-pour is usually not required.

Palm seems to burn hotter and hold the heat longer. While any wax is going to cause burns on skin when in contact, the palm I think will cause deeper burns because it holds the heat longer and does not cool as fast as soy. I had one candle flame on me, it was the FO and it was a blue flame on the surface of the candle. That was, to me, and alcohol burn. It cracked the side of the glass evenly around at the pool line and spilled. Fortunately, it went out by itself. I had another look like it was trying to burn blue at the base of the wick. So I'm careful now where I get my FO's and how much I put in. One thing mentioned above was that the pool was just under an inch? I read somewhere that the pool should only be 1/4 inch so I wonder if the wick is a bit large for the container? I, too, have burned my candles overnight for testing and as long as the pool stays under 1/4 inch, the glass is touchable. If the pool gets much deeper than that, then the glass gets pretty hot.

I was curious how often people have losses due to candle fires and under what circumstances. Here's an interesting article from Maine. Someone left a Yankee Candle on a wood stove and the heat boiled the wax over and it caught fire. Wood stoves and candles don't mix. "Firefighters on scene said that despite the smoke, the house "smelled nice" inside." Maybe we can post some one liners here in this thread and keep an eye out for what folks are doing? http://www.sunjournal.com/river-valley/story/921665?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sunjournaltopheadlines+%28Latest+news%29

I just found some Fuscia chips in my drawer and thought I'd make one more tumbler with Pink Sugar FO. So far it looks very promising for your project. The tumbler has not cooled yet, but a smaller amount that did cool looks good. Oh, and one correction above about RGB formulas is that there is an upper limit for computer colors, 255. So you probably won't see too many programs that mix ratios above 255 per color.

Ok, so I just had to try this hot pink and I'm not happy with the results. I tried the RGB formula and it was way too strong. One drop in 6 oz of 6006 wax was very dark. White did not correct the problem. Then I tried the CMYK and even darker. So I tried a magenta star shaped dye chip (5 points) with 2 points of a yellow star chip and it was too yellow. I added more magenta. Probably close to the right color, but not quite. I think this is a very vibrant color and may need something in the colorant to make it a bit florescent. Hope that helps.

There's a thread on the 444 vs 464 and I just finished a test burn with CD10 wicks. You might enjoy the photos. The CD10 worked out pretty well in a 2.5 inch diameter tumbler.

I don't know how to do this with chips, but if you have liquid dye, it might be easier than you think. If you have any computer paint programs like Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro or GIMP, etc, you can easily find the color you want. Once you do that, there should be RGB or CMYK codes. RGB is Red/Green/Blue. CMYK is Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black. So I found this free program on the internet called colorpic. It doesn't give me a very large range, like Photoshop, but the basics are there. If I wanted something that looks like this image, I'd turn to the RGB or CMYK formulas. In this instance, the RGB is 255R, 42G, 170B or (and I prefer), CMYK M-84, Y-33 Here's how it works. If you want a large quantity, say an ounce or so, put one drop per number of each color in a bottle. So on the CMYK you end up with 84 drops of Magenta and 33 drops of Yellow (which is not enough for an ounce so keep going at that ratio. For the RGB, you would use 255 drops of Red, 42 of Green and 170 drops of Blue. An ounce is about 600 drops. If you just want a very small batch, like for one candle, then divide by the lowest number and round out. IE: RGB would then be 6 drops R, 1 drop G, 4 drops Blue. For the CMYK it would be 3 drops Magenta, one drop yellow. once you have the mix, the strength of your color is based as always on the amount of mixed drops you add to the candle. I prefer CMYK because in that formula, the max number is 100 and it always assumes 100 for White (which most candle wax is well off to a head start for white). I don't like the RGB formula because there is no upper limit. If some color is achieved by adding one drop of yellow to a gallon of blue, then that's what you get for a formula and that really is not workable. The upside to RGB is that we can all get those colors very easily. The down side to CMYK is that nobody has Cyan for sale so you have to formulate it.

Pixie, thanks. I came to the same realization that I was going to have to burn one a day, but the idea of measuring distance didn't occur to me. I'll do that. What a great idea.

Mo pics... Oh, the scale was lighter.... C3 burned .8 oz. CB135 burned .7 oz 444 burned .6 oz 464 burned .7 oz

at the 4 hour mark I blew out the candles. My kitchen did kinda smell like hot buttered rum, but not as strong as I expected. 464 had a huge mushroom, wick down for the future. C3 and CB135 had shrooms too. 444 did not. I used an IR gun to check temps of the pool after the wicks were extinguished. 464 at the base of the wick was 113 degrees a couple of minutes after extinguishing. C3 was 119 135 was 111 444 was 123 I am not sure how to do a HT test. My initial observation after smelling during the burn and more so after extinguishing the wick was: C3 strongest, next was 135, 464, 444. All were weaker than the CT.

More photos....

more pics.

at 2:40, all were edge to edge in the glass for pool and starting to go deep. 464 was 1/4 inch deep. CB135 and C3 were 3/16 deep and 444 was 1/8 deep.

At the 1:40 time, 464 had full wall to wall pool with a substantial mushroom forming. Same with CB135. C3 was almost wall to wall and a small 'shroom. 444 had 1/8 inch to go laterally with no mushroom.