Newbie teething problems

[strawburyduck]

Dear people, may I introduce myself & bend your ears for some of the major prolblems I am having in my candle making.

I Work for a small soap making company in NZ and recently we have gone into soy wax production and boy am I encounting problems. Unfortunately our cilents want the perfect model, not the "a la natural" that soy is producing for us.

My biggest prob yet aside from the mottling or frosting, is when my candles harden I encounter the cracking problem, which is a single line running around the perimeter, appoximately 5 -10 mm from the tins edge and about 3mm deep. Do you have any idea what may be leading up to this. Sometimes it is only a obvious line and not actually cracked but never the lessa line is there.

I use Ecosoya CB 135, Pourette colour chips and our own frangances that we get made up or the cilent does.

Any help would be greatly received.

[strawburyduck]

Me again, Incase your wondering I have poured anywhere between 150F and down to 110F and get no good results. I try and keep my room at 70F.

[topofmurrayhill]

Welcome. It seems that everyone has some unique variables that can make the diagnosis of a problem a little speculative.

Personally I've not encountered cracking around the perimeter so much as cracking towads the center. It seems to me, however, that most of us are probably cooling our containers in a slightly warmer environment than yours. Perhaps this in combination with the metal tins is drawing heat out of the containers too quickly. To test that theory you could try convering one of the tins with a small box.

There may also be ways to make the wax behave a little more robustly. Much as you would expect soy wax to be a preformulated and ready-to-use product, it often seems to benefit from modifiers. You could try pouring another tester with 5% triple pressed vegetable strearic and see if that makes the set up any better.

[strawburyduck]

Thanks for the reply, I'm beginning to feel quite frazzled with this whole process and have been doubting my ability to make these candles, so any information is greatly received.

I will try the steric acid tomorrow and also covering the containners as well. If the temperature I pour my candles in is low,. then what would be the room temperture you are pouring in?

Again, thankyou

[topofmurrayhill]

You may doubt it but I don't. Soy wax can be finicky but problems can usually be sorted out in one way or another. Let us know how those two tests work out.