Guest highflier Posted August 11, 2005 Share Posted August 11, 2005 I have just started to make candles this past month and have read a lot of great stuff on this message board. I have been working with two waxes. The J-223 and the 4630/1945. I really liked the J-223 the best as far as burn goes, but didn't like the wet spots. I then poured 6 candles with the 4630. I have tested 2 of them, French Vanilla and Hot Coco. When I burn them I got a full melt pool in 28 minutes with 2- 44-24-18z in a 4" 16oz. apothacary jar. It has a melt pool of 1/2" deep in 1 hour, and has a great scent throw. That was way to fast of time getting those MP. I then pulled those wicks out and put in 2- 44-20-18z and got a full melt pool in 45 minutes. It was 1/4" deep in one hour and in three hours my melt pool is 5/8" deep. It was still 5/8" deep in four hours as well. Flames are dancing around. The scent throw is great. I'm using 8% fo.My question are:Is this to deep of a melt pool? How deep of a MP can you have safely?And how deep of a melt pool should it be at 4 hours. I was trying to get a full melt pool in 1-1 1/4 hour with a melt pool of 1/2" in four hours. I dont know if I should try to wick this down even more. If so what should my next wicks be in the zincs?What should I do?Thanks for your help,Mike Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
topofmurrayhill Posted August 11, 2005 Share Posted August 11, 2005 Sounds overwicked to me. 2 wicks gives you plenty of firepower to work with so don't be afraid to wick down. The difference between the 2 you tried is marginal.Have you noticed any mushrooms on the wicks? I doubt the candle is burning very cleanly right now.In my personal philosophy I wouldn't be using zinc cores in there, but I know some people love them so maybe just use smaller ones. It's just that they're not the cleanest burning things and you're using two of them in one jar with one of those gunky waxes that has petrolatum or somesuch substance in it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest highflier Posted August 11, 2005 Share Posted August 11, 2005 There is mushrooms on the wicks. But after 5 hours of burning there was no soot around the rim of the jar. It burned very clean. The melt pool after 5 hours was 3/4" deep. The flames were dancing around like crazy. It looked like to me it was because of the mushroom at the top of the wicks. The wick lengths were 3/8" long, maybe I need to shorten them a little and see if that will take away some of the heat.What wicks would you use in a candle like this? Thanks,Mike Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
topofmurrayhill Posted August 11, 2005 Share Posted August 11, 2005 You can get lots of answers about what wicks to use. Personally I'd lean towards HTP wick. It's one of the cleanest burning with the soft viscous waxes. People like zinc core because it's stiff and the tip doesn't curl, but it burns cool and tends to be at the other end of the cleanliness spectrum.To tell you the truth, I suspect a lot of people using these types of waxes are making candles that burn dirty but they're happy as long as they get a huge cloud of FO fumes and don't see any smoke, LOL. Guess it depends on what you call a good candle.Anyway, what I'm hearing makes me suspect your burn is less clean than you think. You have to go to some trouble to do a real test for clean burning, like make a chimney with white fabric at the top to collect soot while the candle burns to completion. Candles that don't emit visible soot will still perform in all different ways when you test them like this.I'm not suggesting you build the chimney. I don't do such formal tests either. Just be aware of the issue and make your choices accordingly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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