Some of my first candles/testing-and learning

[Everito Bandito]

These candles are being tested now. Trying to narrow down to best burning wicks. My first two pillars were brown and scented w/hazelnut coffee. Wife said that they were too dark. Wife was right..lol...but I gotta learn to color along with everything else. My first containers were the 16 oz blue ones.

The piilars that I just lit are scented w/vanilla bake. The green containers are scented with honeysuckle. I was coloring them with yellow...then I had an *IDEA*...Uh-Oh.... Wife says the green ones are color of baby poo. Wife is correct again....LOL... Oh well, they are for learning only..good thing huh.

They might look funky but they sure do smell good.

[Candle Makin Momma]

I like your wife! lol

Not bad at all though. Aside from thepoo color

[elle110]

I love the green, very trendy color right now, go for it!

[Everito Bandito]

Thanks and thanks. I figured I'd post some nuts and bolts pics of just starting out stuff. Looks like I have either underwicked or I just cut my wicks too short for the first lighting of my little green jars. Most of them are barely burning after 2 hours. But they still smell good. FO is under 10% must be more like 7% (just off the top of my head) - I used 2 ounces to 2.21 lbs J223 wax.

Yea I like her too momma and thanks for the vote of confidence elle110. My wife is starting to feel sorry for me..lol...she's now trying to put together a better photo op. for my candles..I told her that I wasn't really concerned about it....but she's busy as a bee now....me thinks she was bored and looking for something to do.

[Luci]

I think they look nice. One of these days I'll get the nerve to try pillars. I've seen some of the most beautiful ones on here. Never see any that look any better in even the really expensive gift shops in this area.

[eugenia]

Everito, you need to let those pillars go for 4 hours and see how they do.

Initial looks good to me.

e

[Everito Bandito]

Always looks better after wife steps in...."Blessed are the bold (wives) for they shall make the old man's baby poo mason jars look a little better"...LOL...

The blue Jar (my very first) is scented with "Coral Delight" from Cajun's.

Pillar flame a bit big - it's been burning almost 3 hrs.

[pennipom@yahoo.com]

Your doin good...I like the green myself:D

[Brat]

Your wife's pretty cool!

I actually like the green, reminds me of split pea soup YUM!

[Everito Bandito]

Thank you all... you too Luci. Eugenia - here are some pics after 3 hrs 10 mins.(lemme know what you think - I value input - especially technical) I did a lot of wick testing on my first two darker brown colored pillars. (since I used wick pins, I could pop one wick out and put another in) I usually let them burn for several hours also. (made many notes also - Barbara said, "you sure are doing a lot of writing for just two candles"....lol...That was before she realized that I was changing wicks in and out.) I got some pretty good use out of those first two pillars.

I think I'm getting close with these two. (maybe - hopefully) My mission is to get them to curl in without hugging them manually and hopefully consume themselves without ever going over the edge.

Lit them at 4:20 - pics taken at 7:30

[Luci]

Looks and sounds like you're having a really good time. Nice to have something fun to do indoors and out of this heat. I remember Columbia summers from grad school days!

[Everito Bandito]

LoL...Columbia is sort of like a rain forest - Hot and Sticky..I have a friend who grew up in New Orleans, moved here from Florida and he said that Columbia was the worst place that he had ever lived in for summer months. He must'av really been serious about it because he moved to Ohio this past winter...lol.

[Scented]

You crack me up with the wife is right comments! I think you've got nice solid colors there.

[Candle Man]

They look great.

I would suggest to not burn them side by side like that. When a candle burns they take up oxygen in order to burn and with them ganged together like that you will not get proper test results. Space them throught the room for better test results.

Good luck with your testing.

[Everito Bandito]

Thanks Candle Man, that makes perfect sense and as you can see. I hadn't thought of it.

I kept upping the wick sizes in an effort to reduce/eliminate mushrooming, but now I think the flames may be too tall. When I get this wicking thing narrowed down to several favorites, I'll use the same wick for the entire burn of the candles.

I'm currently working with CBL 141 wax - I may switch to IGI 4625 before it's all over with, but for now I gotta burn what I can see instead of see what I can burn...lol...

Thanks again, I'll go ahead and seperate them now.

[Everito Bandito]

Took these pics around 9 pm. (4 hrs - 35 minutes burn time on the two tallest pillars) The darker candles are the ones that I started testing with and have used 3 or 4 different wicks in each. I had to carve on the short one in the back to give it a fresh start. It had done some tunneling and was looking pretty raggedy (that's a word aint it..lol..) Anyway it has a fresh HTP 105 in it now.

Just watched "Gone With the Wind" great movie but loooooong.

First pic is melt pools.

Second is flames.

[eugenia]

They are looking pretty good. You really cannot judge on one or two pillar burns. You need to keep it going. Are you trimming nice and short before lighting?

Columbia is where the Zoo is right? I've been there. To me, at times your air feels like you could cut it with a knife.

e

[Luci]

Ha Ha. You got the right place, Eugenia. So hot and muggy there it's hard to breathe. It's hot here on the coast, but we do have the ocean and intracoastal breezes--course the hurricanes to go with that!

[Margaritamama]

They are looking pretty good. You really cannot judge on one or two pillar burns. You need to keep it going........

e

I have to second that..... I have tested countless candles that seemed to burn perfectly for the first 5 or so burns, and I've been almost at the point of whooping around the house in excitement, only to have the next few burns turn to crap!

My advice would be to burn those suckers until you only have an inch left of them. If they burn good up until that point, you're set....... Remember too that you have to test all your FO's the same way, as they can make a huge difference to the burn. Ask me how I know.........

[topofmurrayhill]

I see there's been a mad scientist bandito at work.

Let me suggest that swapping wicks in pillars isn't as useful a technique as it might seem. The shape of the candle (for instance the concave top from the mold) affects the burn a lot. It really does take several burns to see how things are developing with a particular wick. Once you get to that point, there's no way to really start fresh.

It's better to make multiple candles to test different wicks. Unfortunately it consumes more resources. 3 1/2 inch molds are helpful and you can also consider melting and repouring candles with new wicks.

To my eye, the pillar wicking does look a little big. You may not have to melt out as far as you think on the first burn to have a self-consuming pillar. Big wicks can seem to work pretty well if you keep them trimmed, but try trimming them like a casual candle user might and the results can be...a little alarming.

Have fun and good luck with your testing.

[Everito Bandito]

Thank - you all for the responses. (very much)

Yes Eugenia, it is the Riverbanks Zoo. Some folks have petting zoos but in july ours is a sweating zoo...lol...today the J223 cut easier than the air. Also, I have been trimming the wicks before I light them again. With these long burns the wicks/and flames seem to be a bit too tall after a few hours, maybe this is normal. I keep looking over all these different kinds of wicks and I think about when I was a kid they probably didn't have half this stuff, so I'm thinking that I'll order a small amount of the regular flat braid and maybe some square braid type stuff that I'll be willing to bet was used in candles effectively way before a lot of this new wicking hit the market. Just a thought.

Last night I let those pillars burn until 11:46 pm = 7hrs 32mins.

Also the two darker pillars scented with hazelnut coffee were lit around 8:30 pm and I also let them burn until 11:46.

Funny thing about it is that they all started to produce mushrooms about the same time which was somewhere during the last 50 minutes of the burn.

The HTP 105 had the largest mushrooms out of the four. The other dark candle was wicked with a CD 20.

The two taller lighter colored pillars were wicked with LX 26 and CD 18.

Other than the mushrooming the meltpools were good, they were not too deep and they were giving me the desired result of self consuming edges.

Today at 2:13 pm I lit all four candles again. At 7:13 after a 5 hour burn the HTP 105 had made itself into a mushroom tree so I blew it out...The LX 26 had developed a tiny mushroom and I blew it out also (at 5 hrs). I did notice that that little tiny mushroom on the LX 26 had displaced some heat from center and seemed to have affected the edge of the candle rim very slightly (thinner than the rest of the edge around the top. (just an observation)

I let the CD 20 in the dark pillar and the CD 18 in the light pillar continue to burn until 11:03 pm - 8 hours, 50 mins. (and yes Top, the flames were getting pretty tall by this time) The wicks may not be curling/self consuming quite fast enough.

I may be wrong but I may be right...lol...I vaugely remember a song that went something like that only I think it was you instead of I.

Anyway the candle is a system and any one of the components can change the system. (Margaritamama I'm paying attention )

One of the reasons for wicking these candles up was to attempt to get rid of mushrooming and some of my reasoning for that is that if I can get the wick to self consume then the casual candle user may not end up with a lot of carbon pieces built up in the wax pool as time goes on and the candle nears the bottom.

One thing that I think that I am seeing (so far) in my quest for making this great burning candle is that there seems to be a trade off for each change in the system components...and that is one of the things that makes this quest intriguing.

Another point of interest (maybe) is that it took over 8 hours for the CD 20 and CD 18 to develop mushrooms (even though they were tiny -they did appear) but they didn't appear nearly as soon as they did yesterday/last night.(meaning the amount of burn time on the candles) However, the part that carries my interest a bit, is the time that they did this, which was around 11 pm (both nights). Now this may be absolutely meaningless but my house starts to get a bit cooler as the evening wears on = air conditioning finally catches up to the intense summer heat as the night air cools a bit outside.

So it may be true that ambient temperature affects mushrooming as well - dunno - it was just an observation.

Nevertheless, I have chosen to burn the CD 20 and the CD 18 candles, how did mama put it - burn those suckers until I only have an inch left of them.

Top I am hearing what you are saying about swapping wicks in pillars and believe me I value what you are saying. Now here comes the *but*....lol....

When I ordered my wick kits - quite a few actually - I really, really didn't know sh*t from shineola about what size/type etc. wicks were going to work best out of all these wicks that I was looking at so - even though I do see your point and agree, at my very first stage of (let's see what this one does) I was able to weed out some of the obvious wrong wicks for these particular candles rather quickly and affordably.

So I guess that I was able to leap from unborn to infant stage of learning to wick these candles with a little more speed by having done so.....lol...but I may be wrong. And I would also say that your eye is likely correct on the wicks being a little big....but hey at least I didn't resort to what I was considering (might still do it just for the heck of it) and put a shoelace in one of them.(mad scientist effect)

Could'nt I get away with pouring a 3 in. candle in a 4.5 in mold to save a bit, since these will be for testing. Something like set a 3 in tall something beside the mold and just eyeball it.

I thank everyone for your guidance and willingness to share your knowledge and experience. (very much) Thank-You! - It's very nice to be doing something that I am enjoying and have good people to share it with....I would also like to say thanks to the sponsors of this board.

[topofmurrayhill]

I think I now understand better what you're doing. It seems reasonable that you could swap wicks to see how they work in very long burns.

It's different from the approach many people here use for initial testing. Typical instructions with a 3 inch pillar say to burn it for 3-4 hours at a time, so usually we begin by choosing a wick that works if someone follows instructions. In that case it can take several burns to see how things develop as the shape of the candle changes at the top. That makes it hard to start fresh except with a new candle.

I think you'll find it gets "interesting" when you consider all the ways the system can be designed combined with how it performs when used in different ways. If the candles are for you, then certainly you can test and design them according to how you like to use them.

[Everito Bandito]

Here is a scenario about my swapping wicks. Let's say that on my very first burn I would install a wick and light my candle and after 3.5 hours that wick had only produced a 2 in dia. melt pool. Then I would remove that wick and install the next size up of the same wick type to see if it produced a larger melt pool a larger or smaller mushroom etc.

By doing this I was able to determine a few characteristics of different types and sizes of wicks. When I got to a wick that seemed to be working fairly well I would put one of those wicks in a new candle.

Granted that my initial candle began to look a bit whoppy jawed to say the least, so I just took a sharp knife and basically gave it a pretty much smooth top (slightly convave) and then tested another wick and so on. Now this one workhorse candle I'll call it (actually two of them) were what I used to get myself closer to the wicks that showed more promise.

Upon finding promising wicks they got inserted (actually new ones of same type and size) got inserted into my new candles for a more accurate testing.

Please don't think that I'm arguing here. I'm attemtping to provide a clearer picture of what I was doing.

I eventually plan to produce a safe sellable product given a lot more time and a lot more testing. I'm fairly sure that I understand the general instructions and purpose of the 3 or 4 hour burns - and the concept of 1 hour per inch burning and I'm thinking that the reason (or at least one reason) for burning a 3 inch pillar for 4 hours is to see whether or not the candle edges are going to keep the melt pool in check. (hope I said that correctly) I may never sell a single one but I still want to learn to produce a top-notch product.

My burning for the longer burns is basically for a couple of reasons. One is just to see if or how long it takes for my wicks to produce a mushroom. The other is to see what would happen to the candle if casual candle burner X lit the candle and forgot about it. Which theoretically can happen to anyone, myself included. (and probably will sooner or later)

When I test with the long burns I do take notes at 3 hrs and 4 hrs, then I have let them continue to burn in order to see how well they would hold up in the forgotten scenario. I continue to observe and note throughout the entire process.

I will also test with multiple 3 to 4 hour burns as well.(I'm fairly sure that I am understanding what you are saying about choosing a wick that works if someone follows instructions.) I plan to test per instructions as well. To make a long story short I will test until I am certain that each candle that I let leave my home is as safe as it can be. I am also aware that it will be likely that my best looking/burning candles right now, will not hold a candle (pun intended) to what I will be producing two or three years down the road.

I really am listening to you and I am soaking it in to my mind. Thank you for taking the time to respond to this thread. I have read a lot on this board and I have read enough to know that you know exactly what you are talking about.

I am well aware that I have very much to learn. Thanks for helping me think even more about what I am doing. You may have noticed in the first pic on this thread that my pouring pot is a dog food can(sitting right next to the melting pot)...I'm disabled with severe chronic pain, in my lower back and legs. My income has dropped from pretty good to basicaly nothing, so I cut some expenses to a certain degree.

Just a few short months ago I couldn't have even considered making candles or even typing this rather long response,(it took me several sittings but I eventually got it done) but I fianally got a doctor who is attacking my pain aggressively and I thank god for him, because I'm now able to come out of my shell a bit and actually do something worthwhile.

My definition of luck is: L-abor U-nder C-orrect K-nowledge and I'll take all the luck I can get.

[Margaritamama]

I tend to do the same thing as you when I test. Once I've got the initial wicking right (1 hour for every inch....) I like to give my candles the power burn test. I pretty much light the sucker up, and leave it burning so that I can observe what happens. You are correct - there are some people that will do that, and you have to make sure of what your candle will do in that situation.....

I'm one of those people that likes to have candles burning continuously. Very often I will light a candle at 10:00am in the morning, and not extinguish it permanently until I go to bed at night, around 10:00pm! I will trim the wick during the day, but for the most part, it stays lit. Now, I have not had a lot of success getting mottles to do that - they start to bulge out after a few hours. Rustics on the other hand, have shown great promise.........

[Everito Bandito]

I waited until 1am to light 3 of the pillars tonight just to let the house cool off really well. (it was 97 degrees here today with heat index over 100)

It has been nearly 3 hours and only one has a mushroom and it is very tiny (LX 28) so I suppose that pretty much shoots my possible ambient temperature/mushrooming theory in the foot....lol...

The candles continue to seem to be burning well, though. Going to blow-em out shortly and try to catch a nap. (maybe) I sleep very little.