Pouring and Testing Candles

[HeartFullOTarts]

Hi everyone....I made my first candle the other day and I was looking through the posts to see if I could get a list of things to test for but I couldn't find anything.

Does anyone have a list of exactly what kinds of things i should be looking for when I do a test burn?

Also, how do you pour your candles? Do you make just enough wax mixture to pour the one candle you're going to test or do you make it in quanitity and pour one to melt and then remelt the wax when you're ready to pour the other candles? I'm not sure how this works. I hope that makes sense :undecided

Any advice would be greatly appreciated !! Thank you!

[Jen]

Does anyone have a list of exactly what kinds of things i should be looking for when I do a test burn?

Also, how do you pour your candles? Do you make just enough wax mixture to pour the one candle you're going to test or do you make it in quanitity and pour one to melt and then remelt the wax when you're ready to pour the other candles? I'm not sure how this works. I hope that makes sense :undecided

Any advice would be greatly appreciated !! Thank you!

Here goes

Test for cold scent throw and hot scent throw. Extinguish your candles before testing hot throw! The wax is what smells, not the wick. Always burn a candle 1 hour for every 1" of its diameter, i.e. 3 hours for a 3" candle. This will tell you whether you've got the right size wick. Also look for burning properties, like even melting, leaks, any strange behaviour, high flames, no flames, sputtering, stuff like that. Basically, does it behave like you want it to?

If I was testing votive mixtures, I'd make maybe 4 different batches of wax and just pour the one of each. If the mixture's a dud I don't want to waste too many of my precious supplies! Always take notes and label so you know which is what. Once you've got a winner, then it's time to make bigger batches.

HTH!

[Candle Man]

Here is a test sheet you can print and use. This is an old test sheet and you may want to update it to your needs. At least it gives you a starting point http://www.candlecauldron.com/cdltestsheet.doc

[Henryk]

I always thought this was a good way to test cold and hot throw across "systems" (a candle being a system of a formulation of wick/wax/FO/pour temp/additives, etc.): http://www.candletech.com/comparingscentthrow.htm

Nothing can account for differences between people's senses though. I'm pretty sensitive to smells so I'm not a good person to ask "how strong is ...?" even though we all do it on the boards IMO its just one big variable. However, I know if I have one candle burning and DW out of the blue says she can really smell that - then I know its pretty decent because she can hardly smell anything!

HTH