Any tips for making rolled BW sheet candles?

[Calex]

Just thought I'd pick some brains before making a bunch of mistakes and misteps.

 

I just ordered some natural beeswax sheeting to experiment with rolled candles. I'm planning on warming the wax, lightly, with my heat gun and rolling up some untreated and unprimed cotton braid wicks as tightly as possible. I'm not sure what size to try, but I plan on starting with smaller wicks and taking notes on candle width to see what works. I'm not planning on using wick tabs.

 

Thoughts and suggestions anyone?

[Sponiebr]

Well, I've never made these, but I used to buy them when I was over in Europe. As I recall the wick was about 1/16" thick and the top edge of the sheet was tapered so that you would start the rolling at the maximum width and the rolling would taper down to the maximum thickness of the candle body. So let's say a 10 inch long candle would have about 15 turns of wax on it, and only the bottom 6 inches or so was a constant thickness and the rest tapered up to the flame end. The melting wax would drip down into the spiraling seams and sort of solidify the top end of the candle.  There were never any wick tabs or anything, just basically a string wrapped in beeswax comb.

 

I make soap, not candles, but I am very familiar with using these candles for both lighting and as a source for getting beeswax. 

 

HTH, (maybe?) 

 

Sponie 

[TallTayl]

For 8" tapers, I use 1/2 a sheet, warm bit by bit as I roll and wick with a #2/0 square braid wick.

 

for a 3" pillar, 4" tall I use 2 1-2 sheets and a #2 square braid. Same wick for a pillar 8" tall, 5 sheets rolled as tightly as possible. 

 

the wax sheets dry out a LOT over time and get very brittle. The fresher the sheet the more pliable and tightly it will roll. A heat gun is your best friend. On all I warm the bottoms slightly and flatten to "set" the wick in a bit or they will easily pull out if tugged.

[Calex]

Thanks for the tips guys!

 

I ended up just rolling a whole sheet into a candle last night to test out the process. I used a #2 braided cotton, as the only thing I had that was smaller was a 1/0 which seemed too small. 

 

I rolled the candle so that it spiraled into a point at the top, but didn't really like the look so just did a flat top/bottom roll (just unrolled and rerolled it). The beeswax I got was very pliable and needed no additional heat. But we'll see how much it dries out. I pinched the beeswax around the wick as tight as possible to begin the roll, and then it was really easy to roll the rest up.

 

I burned it for 2 hours last night and am burning it right now and it's going great so far. It looks really nice and there hasn't been a single drip yet. 

 

I expected this to be easier than making pillars/containers, but this was just ridiculously easy (at least so far). I'm pretty excited to find a new candle method to play with!

 

Only down side, so far, is that the wax is a bit smokey and doesn't have much of a scent other than that. It's not horribly smokey, but it doesn't smell nearly as nice of a honey/wax scent as my Washington State wax or Canadian organic wax.

Edited October 1, 2016 by Calex

[TallTayl]

I just roll mine flat. A #2 in that size might just be a little too hot to give the warm, homey scent. Is the diameter about 1.75- 2" for that single sheet?

[Calex]

4 minutes ago, TallTayl said:

I just roll mine flat. A #2 in that size might just be a little too hot to give the warm, homey scent. Is the diameter about 1.75- 2" for that single sheet?

 

The diameter is about 1.25 inches. I'll get some smaller wicks to experiment with for sure, though this does seem to be burning nicely.

[Calex]

22 hours ago, TallTayl said:

I just roll mine flat. A #2 in that size might just be a little too hot to give the warm, homey scent. Is the diameter about 1.75- 2" for that single sheet?

 

Yeah, I think I've over-wicked two of my candles now that I'm really seeing them burn. I did one, single roll cut into thirds that is nearly 2" wide. Used a #2 for that, which seems about right to me as there's just a touch of outer edge sticking up as the candle burns down.

 

The smokey I mentioned in my earlier post was in regards to the wax itself; it just smells smokey when not burning. The candles themselves aren't overly smokey and I don't really smell the smokey wax smell once they're burning. I'm not sure if that was clear in my previous post.

 

These rolled candles are seriously easy and fun, and I love the instant gratification - roll and (test) burn! These will be perfect for certain applications in our shop, especially since I don't think I have the patience to make real BW tapers.