Holly Posted September 12, 2005 Share Posted September 12, 2005 Hi,I have had some trouble with dips (with a hairline circular crack -- about 2" in diameter) but not with every candle. This happens mainly with my testers without the wicks then when I pour the wax in a candle with wicks adhered to the bottom. I always take the heat gun to smooth out the top of the testers with the dip and circular hairline crack. When I have to do this the top will not be as smooth as when I do not have to do this. I don't mind this so much.Today, I poked two holes (MODIFIED TO ADD) ---> "for the wicks" after I took the heat gun to the top and after it set back up. I then zapped the top again to seal the wax around the wick. I waited for it to set. After I lit it and it burned for a bit, I then noticed that one wick was leaning and was way too long. This is the first time this has happened to me. It appears that there was an air pocket underneath. My question is, if this air pocket is not visible to the eye when the candle has not been burned yet, how does one know if a relief hole needs to be poked? Since this candle did have the dip and very FINE hairline circular crack, I could have poked a hole because I had to zap it anyway. But, how do I know if one of these holes are not underneath a nice and smooth top? I prefer not to mess with the tops if they are smooth because if I do the tops do not look as good. But, sinkhole surprises are not a good thing for customers. I know what to do with them but they will not and will consider the candle defective. Should I poke relief holes with all my candles? I look forward to any suggestions. Thanks.~Holly Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
topofmurrayhill Posted September 12, 2005 Share Posted September 12, 2005 I've been getting this kind of thing with Eco CBA but never with Eco Pure Soy. In case I decide to go with the CBA I've been looking for a pour temp solution and the only thing I haven't tried yet is pouring at the congealing point of the wax (basically as cool as physically possible to pour). If that doesn't work (and I suspect it won't) I'd have to play it safe and poke a bunch of holes before either heatgunning it or doing a repour.However, if you're willing to put an additive in the soy there was a thread where this set up problem was apparently completely eliminated with a small (2% percentish) stearic addition. I'm considering that a last resort because it will eliminate being able to say 100% soy wax, but I'm curious to try it just to see the effect.Maybe not coincidentally, some of the best tops I remember getting were when I was using color blocks. I thought it would be a good idea to switch to a dye that was either pure (powder) or soy-based so as not to introduce any other substance into the wax. But in the case of color blocks that substance is stearic acid so it may have been helping!OK here's the relevant thread: http://www.candletech.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3792 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ellie1974 Posted September 12, 2005 Share Posted September 12, 2005 Yep Stearic acid does the trick..I use between 1/2 and 3/4 teaspoon per pound of wax..I noticed if I use more than that..then I have to wick up and I donot want to mess with that..It really does help with the sink holes..I have poured at 100 and it still sunk...I have poured at every temp and still got sinkholes..so I got upset and emailed the company and they suggested to add between 1 to 2% stearic acid.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marilyn Posted September 12, 2005 Share Posted September 12, 2005 Thanks so much for the suggestion about the stearic acid. It has helped me a lot with sink holes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Holly Posted September 14, 2005 Author Share Posted September 14, 2005 Thanks TopofMurrayhill and Ellie,Sorry it took so long to get back to this. It has been crazy around here. I do use an vegi additive that is to help frosting and to help to achieve smooth tops. Would it be ok to add the stearic too? I assume that the vegi additive is completely different from stearic. I will give the stearic acid a try. I am testing out a brown powered dye to see if it will frost less than the brown liquid dye and it recommended to melt it in stearic ahead of time. I did not know at the time if it would be a good thing to add to my wax and what it would do or change, but now that I know what it does and what it can help, it would work out fine. If I continue to have trouble with airpockets then I will just poke relief holes in all my candles to be on the safe side. Thanks again for your help.~Holly Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
topofmurrayhill Posted September 14, 2005 Share Posted September 14, 2005 I resorted to stearic in the CBA last night. It's a joyful thing. Don't know if it will have the same effect in your wax, but since the symptom is so similar the medicine sure seems worth a try.Holly the powders are a whopping pain in the butt. Some of them are almost impossible to dissolve completely. If you're gonna try dissolving them in stearic, you could save yourself some trouble and just buy color blocks because that's exactly what those are. Judging by the color blocks, they don't dissolve all that well in stearic either.Basically the only way they seem to dissolve reliably is in a solvent, which is how liquid dyes are made. The next method I'm going to try is the soy crystals I saw at Candle Cocoon. Those look promising and come in a lot of handy dandy pre-mixed colors. They basically put a ton of liquid dye in soy then evaporate all the solvent, leaving soy dye concentrate.Regarding the additives, my personal approach is to understand what's going on as best as possible and make sure that everything I'm putting in is there for a reason. Thus if I were you I'd take my smallest container and make one candle with just stearic and another with both the stearic and antifrost and see how they compare. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Henryk Posted September 14, 2005 Share Posted September 14, 2005 Those crystals from CC work very well. I heard somewhere, but don't know if its true, that FC&C does a lot of the dye crystals you see out there, but don't know if its true for these. I'm wondering if the "natural wax base" is actually palm - its not soy because the ones I have are definately brittle like palm. The soy based dye chips on the other hand are definately soy - very soft. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
topofmurrayhill Posted September 14, 2005 Share Posted September 14, 2005 The cystals should be arriving any day and I'm looking forward to trying them out.Checked out some packets of the soy diamonds and they arrived all mushy and stuck together. It didn't strike me as a very good product. In fact, if people are actually buying those maybe I could make a business out of selling my clamshell soy color chunks, as they are much nicer. I'd just have to buy a breathing apparatus to work with the damned powders. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Molly Posted September 14, 2005 Share Posted September 14, 2005 Just in case you guys didn't know, there is a 100% veggie stearic, so no, the candle wouldn't be 100% soy, but it would be 100% veggie! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Holly Posted September 16, 2005 Author Share Posted September 16, 2005 Hi TopofMurrayHill,Yes, I sure did find that the powder dye is a pain in the butt. It did the same thing on me as the chips would do at times -- leave little condensed dye spots -- mainly at the bottom. I have used liquid dyes for awhile now. I did not mix it in stearic because at the time I did not know if I wanted to use steric in my wax. I will look into those soy crystals too. Thanks for the info. As for the stearic, I like you, do not like to use any addtional additives unless it is going to do something for it. I may still need to test it in my normal size jars so I can tell if it will help the sinkholes/airpockets. My shallow tureens may not be as inclined to get the sinkholes/airpockets. I will sure be glad when I get all the kinks out. The testing is a long process. Again, thanks for your help. Your ideas/suggestions/comments always make a lot of sense. :smiley2: ~Holly Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Holly Posted September 16, 2005 Author Share Posted September 16, 2005 Just in case you guys didn't know, there is a 100% veggie stearic, so no, the candle wouldn't be 100% soy, but it would be 100% veggie!Hi Molly,Thanks. Yes, the stearic that I have is 100% veggie. ~Holly Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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