How do Palm container candles compare to Soy/Paraffin?

[Clear Black]

Ive been making candles for many years now and have never considered palm candles to be a "contender" in the market compared to either Paraffin or Soy.  So my question is, do palm container candles have the ability to compete, meaning...do they have a good enough scent throw and are they able to hold scent like Soy or Paraffin. I only ask this because I am confused as to how palm does with fragrance, whether it be hot or cold throw. Some distributors claim max fragrance load is 3%, another claims it is 9.5%. (This is in reference to IGI R2322A GLASS GLOW PALM CONTAINER WAX)  So I am not sure who to trust as I have never made any palm candles until last night. I made one with 8% FO and the FO VERY slightly seeped out, but after resting overnight those seepage's were no longer there. I can always lower the FO % no problem so I am not worried there. 

 

Basically, what I am after is does Palm container candles "hold up" against their more popular counterparts in regards to hot/cold throw?

 

Cheers all

[TallTayl]

In a word, yes. 
 

Pros:

palm candles, when made well, can easily outperform soy in many ways.  Notably, after about a week of cure time they pretty much stay stable, so your wick is your wick. 
 

very shippable during any weather. Palm wax is either solid or liquid.  There is no in between that can melt into sludge in a hot delivery truck. 

palm can burn spic and span sootless  when well made.

 

Palm wax seems much less prone to issues during  high humidity. 
 

every lot of palm wax I have received and used has performed practically identically to the prior lot.
 

they hold less FO (3-6% max depending on the blend is typical) but HT is better with less FO. I tell this tea lite story so often, but forgive me... a tea lite I made scented at 3% of a lilac Burning in my kitchen once overtook my entire house So powerfully that I had to open windows in a Chicago January to air it out. 
 

the scent throw tends to be more “pure” and less wax. You know how most candle waxes have that undertone of burning wax? Palm tends to not. 

 

in a glass container, the glow of palm is mesmerizing. 
 

frost is a feature not a detriment!!!! you WANT frost, so cool slowly. 
 

you need to pour hot, so less time spent waiting for it to be ready to pour. Heat to 200*F, add color and FO. stir and pour as hot as you can. 
 

palm colors beautifully. A tiny amount of liquid color makes clean colors, not pastels like more opaque soy.

 

palm can be an excellent amendment to some soy waxes to improve less desirable tendencies of both. C1, for example, contains 20% of a palm wax.  Not sure which one. 
 

Pro  and con:

container type is important. Palm likes to burn down then out, so your container should be taller than it is wide. Palm wax is terrible in tins for this reason. I would have gone palm long ago if my main brand didn’t rely on tins. 
 

Cons:

 

over Wicking and overscenting can be disastrous.  both of My near house fires were caused by and over wicked palm candles. The first One was wood wicked in a square libbey jar. The flame got too tall and hot and set the Libbey jar on fire shooting glass across my living room.
 

The other was a 16 oz jelly jar that was over scented, over colored and over wicked. it leaked colored FO upon arrival.  I had to sit with the candle nearby within eyesight and trim the wick every 15 minutes to keep it tamed. The jar was still totally black by the end. 

in my experience and opinion, palm burns more quickly than a similarly sized container of soy. 
 

people don’t really know what the wax is so you’ll need to market to them differently about the benefits. 
 

it is harder to clean pour pots and tools. A griddle or heat gun helps. 

CT Can seem less powerful than soy or paraffin, but it is there. When kept sealed, the containers can hold their own for customers who desire a nice CT. that said, @moonshine made a feather palm pillar candle of my Sweet Amber for me. I could smell wafts of it for many months throughout my living room. Made me super happy to smell my favorite scent of all time when in my favorite chair. 
 

popular blends, like glass glow, can go out of stock for months at a time, especially during the Winter holiday season.

 

wicks that work well in palm are less abundant. CSN are my favorite, but are only through Candlescience in small quantities. a couple of in between sizes are not readily available through candle science, they need to be ordered special from distributors.

square braid can work.

rrd “can work” though I have not found them to be great in my tests.

 

it is difficult to do wickectomy es to swap out wicks when learning the wax. You need to excavate with sharp tools to remove then replace a new test wick. 
 

I encourage you to try an easy to get palm wax just for the experience.  Palm wax is like no other, so treat it as such. Don’t try to make it burn like a soy candle. Forget everything you have ever learned about soy when working with palm.
 

Let a bit of hang up form as that is the glow as it burns deeper into the jar. The glow catches up as it burns. they are like little stained glass windows.

[Clear Black]

3 hours ago, TallTayl said:

In a word, yes. 
 

Pros:

palm candles, when made well, can easily outperform soy in many ways.  Notably, after about a week of cure time they pretty much stay stable, so your wick is your wick. 
 

very shippable during any weather. Palm wax is either solid or liquid.  There is no in between that can melt into sludge in a hot delivery truck. 

palm can burn spic and span sootless  when well made.

 

Palm wax seems much less prone to issues during  high humidity. 
 

every lot of palm wax I have received and used has performed practically identically to the prior lot.
 

they hold less FO (3-6% max depending on the blend is typical) but HT is better with less FO. I tell this tea lite story so often, but forgive me... a tea lite I made scented at 3% of a lilac Burning in my kitchen once overtook my entire house So powerfully that I had to open windows in a Chicago January to air it out. 
 

the scent throw tends to be more “pure” and less wax. You know how most candle waxes have that undertone of burning wax? Palm tends to not. 

 

in a glass container, the glow of palm is mesmerizing. 
 

frost is a feature not a detriment!!!! you WANT frost, so cool slowly. 
 

you need to pour hot, so less time spent waiting for it to be ready to pour. Heat to 200*F, add color and FO. stir and pour as hot as you can. 
 

palm colors beautifully. A tiny amount of liquid color makes clean colors, not pastels like more opaque soy.

 

palm can be an excellent amendment to some soy waxes to improve less desirable tendencies of both. C1, for example, contains 20% of a palm wax.  Not sure which one. 
 

Pro  and con:

container type is important. Palm likes to burn down then out, so your container should be taller than it is wide. Palm wax is terrible in tins for this reason. I would have gone palm long ago if my main brand didn’t rely on tins. 
 

Cons:

 

over Wicking and overscenting can be disastrous.  both of My near house fires were caused by and over wicked palm candles. The first One was wood wicked in a square libbey jar. The flame got too tall and hot and set the Libbey jar on fire shooting glass across my living room.
 

The other was a 16 oz jelly jar that was over scented, over colored and over wicked. it leaked colored FO upon arrival.  I had to sit with the candle nearby within eyesight and trim the wick every 15 minutes to keep it tamed. The jar was still totally black by the end. 

in my experience and opinion, palm burns more quickly than a similarly sized container of soy. 
 

people don’t really know what the wax is so you’ll need to market to them differently about the benefits. 
 

it is harder to clean pour pots and tools. A griddle or heat gun helps. 

CT Can seem less powerful than soy or paraffin, but it is there. When kept sealed, the containers can hold their own for customers who desire a nice CT. that said, @moonshine made a feather palm pillar candle of my Sweet Amber for me. I could smell wafts of it for many months throughout my living room. Made me super happy to smell my favorite scent of all time when in my favorite chair. 
 

popular blends, like glass glow, can go out of stock for months at a time, especially during the Winter holiday season.

 

wicks that work well in palm are less abundant. CSN are my favorite, but are only through Candlescience in small quantities. a couple of in between sizes are not readily available through candle science, they need to be ordered special from distributors.

square braid can work.

rrd “can work” though I have not found them to be great in my tests.

 

it is difficult to do wickectomy es to swap out wicks when learning the wax. You need to excavate with sharp tools to remove then replace a new test wick. 
 

I encourage you to try an easy to get palm wax just for the experience.  Palm wax is like no other, so treat it as such. Don’t try to make it burn like a soy candle. Forget everything you have ever learned about soy when working with palm.
 

Let a bit of hang up form as that is the glow as it burns deeper into the jar. The glow catches up as it burns. they are like little stained glass windows.

 

Wow, such a thoughtful and intelligent response. Many thanks TT. 

 

For starters, I believe I went well over the FO% I should have at 8%. The next one I will for sure drop to at or below 6% and see how that is. At 8% the CT was amazing, stronger than most soy blends I have been using. 

 

As for reference, my "endgame" will be the 31 oz. Libbey Cylinder Jar, so it will indeed be taller than wider. I will either double wick, or if need be it can be triple wicked. Although once you start going 3 wicks in this jar you have to be pretty darn sure about not over wicking as it is a tallish jar.

 

I purchased a 10lb bag of the Glass glow from Lonestar to blend with some J-223, which makes a great HT but on the weakish side for CT. While working with the palm I found it to be very easy to use in the granule form and started messing around with a straight palm in tiny testers. So far its a very different experience but one I would like to look into further.  The 31 oz Libbey holds about 27 oz of finished product, so I want to test some more smaller ones before I start wasting product in those bigger jars.

 

Thanks for all the tips and assurance that palm is worth looking into. Ive said this before and will say again, I am about at the point where I want to stop selling soy altogether and just forget it exists lol. Ive spent the better part of a year trying to move on from soy and the last of my stock is about sold, so time to maybe reformulate with something that does not vary as much batch to batch. 

[TallTayl]

That is a monster size jar! Good luck! 
 

the status jar is a nice one to cut your teeth on. I pick them up at local dollar store to have on hand for fun projects like this. 
 

you will love shutting the door on soy. ❤️
 

when making these, remember that there will always be a big trapped air bubble once the top seals over. Many people have great luck flipping the jar over when the top crust is thick enough to force the bubble to what will be the bottom of the finished candle. 

[Clear Black]

41 minutes ago, TallTayl said:

That is a monster size jar! Good luck! 
 

the status jar is a nice one to cut your teeth on. I pick them up at local dollar store to have on hand for fun projects like this. 
 

you will love shutting the door on soy. ❤️
 

when making these, remember that there will always be a big trapped air bubble once the top seals over. Many people have great luck flipping the jar over when the top crust is thick enough to force the bubble to what will be the bottom of the finished candle. 

 

I have heard this mentioned before...does this actually work? And yes, my first tester indeed had a cavity just below the surface which I poked at and then refilled with the leftover wax. How does the "flip" work with having my wick retainers in place? Is it ok by this point to remove the retainer and do the flip? Hmm

 

The 31 oz Libbey cylinder is indeed a massive jar. I really love the 2-wick status type jar that Kringle offers, the one with the nice big label ya know. So Im using that as an inspiration for a tall multi-wick jar that is also straight sided and that 31 cylinder seems like a good fit.  

 

You can get the Libbey Cylinder jars at your local Michaels craft stores btw, which is awesome for just picking a few up at a time for testers  

[TallTayl]

Once the top crust is thick enough to hold back the cooling wax I take off the wick holders and do the flip. It takes a little bit to learn the right time so that you don’t have a gush of molten wax everywhere. When the crust is thick enough that wick is not going anywhere.
 

It does work and is certainly easier than poking and refilling! It looks a lot nicer too.

[Clear Black]

3 hours ago, TallTayl said:

Once the top crust is thick enough to hold back the cooling wax I take off the wick holders and do the flip. It takes a little bit to learn the right time so that you don’t have a gush of molten wax everywhere. When the crust is thick enough that wick is not going anywhere.
 

It does work and is certainly easier than poking and refilling! It looks a lot nicer too.

 

Awesome! Something new to try and learn, I love it