why trim the wick?

[Chef Isaac]

why do they say to trim the wick before you burn the candle?

[LuminousBoutique]

so you dont get a torch. When your wick is longer than it should be you will get a big flame, which likely will smoke.. can overheat your container.. and burn the candle down faster than it would otherwise burn. It can also burn hotter which will mess with your fragrance, burning it off quicker.

If the wick is too long, the combustion process in the candle flame is altered and it produces carbon black instead of carbon dioxide. The carbon black will stick to anything it comes into contact with, including your candle jar, your walls, your ceiling.. yuck!

Edited December 20, 2009 by LuminousBoutique

[Kitn]

That is good to know , I always wondered that too .

[topofmurrayhill]

All of what Luminous said is right if the wick is longer than it should be, but trimming the wick to 1/4" has basically become a labeling standard to cover all the different designs on the market, because many of them require it. However, some don't.

There are candles on the market that work fine or work better if you don't trim the wick before lighting. Some candles can even be burned for an indefinite period of time without the wick needing to be trimmed. It's possible to design candles to work in these ways. Sometimes you might need to have some control over your wax blend to make it easier.

This is something I've been concentrating on lately. I'm kind of down on candles that become torchy if you light them without trimming or leave them burning for too long. I see candlemakers mocking their customers' burning habits and blackened jars, but if you give them something that's high-maintenance or requires careful adherence to instructions, you can predict that many of them won't have the best experience with it.

Sometimes I even hear candlemakers talk about wanting their candles to be trimmed shorter than 1/4" to work well. To me, that sounds like it's going in entirely the wrong direction. At the very least one should be designing with standard industry labeling in mind.

[chuck_35550]

Well, you know the public has an experience of poorly made candles that are underwicked. They don't trim the wick but rather dig wax out from around the wick to try and get the stupid thing to burn. Educating customers, means getting them to understand that your candle is an exception to that experience. Trimming the cinder block off of the wick leaves a mighty short piece and may scare some folks away from trimming. Frankly, the rest of them could care less. It burns. Thats all.

[Gypsyjen]

I've been working on the same thing Top has - to design a candle in which the wick is completely self-trimming even after long burn periods, with no soot and no mushrooms. I could never get it to work with the 3" diameter jars I was using before, so I moved to different jars. I've been having great luck lately with the new Crisa jars I'm using and several different parasoy blends, using CD and ECO wicks.

[LuminousBoutique]

I see candlemakers mocking their customers' burning habits and blackened jars, but if you give them something that's high-maintenance or requires careful adherence to instructions, you can predict that many of them won't have the best experience with it.

I agree... even the most educated of people usually dont care about a high maintenance candle.. they just want to light it and burn it. I highly doubt any of them read the instruction sheet I am required by my insurance to send, or even the sticker on the bottom of the candle. My mom was burning my testers wrong for about a year, but on the flip side of that, I was over wicking so even if she had been burning them right, they would have been wrong. We have to take responsibility too.

[JeffersonB]

By their nature, candles will always require some "maintenance", or at least attention. For example, none of us would advise anyone to leave a candle burning in a room with no one in it.

Having said that, I agree with LuminousBoutique that the typical person just wants to light their candle and enjoy it. I think one of the advantages of candles crafted by a candle making enthusiast vs cheap mass-produced candles is that we put a lot more time trying to get the wicking right, so the customer is more likely to have a candle that burns well with the least possible maintenance.

Educating our customers about this will help them appreciate our candles even more.

BTW I think one answer to the proper length to trim a wick is to trim it to the point that the end of the wick is in the edge of the flame. Although we take the curve of a burning wick for granted, this was actually a technological advance. Wicks these days are woven so that they curl as they burn, which places the end of the wick in the heat of the flame, making it somewhat self-trimming.

[CareBear]

you don't need to trim them before lighting if they are already properly trimmed to 1/4"

[topofmurrayhill]

you don't need to trim them before lighting if they are already properly trimmed to 1/4"

Even if they are longer than that at the end of a burn, the excess can trim off as soon as you light them the next time. That's ideally how it works.

BTW I think one answer to the proper length to trim a wick is to trim it to the point that the end of the wick is in the edge of the flame. Although we take the curve of a burning wick for granted, this was actually a technological advance. Wicks these days are woven so that they curl as they burn, which places the end of the wick in the heat of the flame, making it somewhat self-trimming.

Actually it has worked this way since the flat braided wick was invented a very long time ago. All the fancy modern wicks share this basic design with plain old plaited wicking. While the original variety is very floppy and not suited to container candles, all the newer flat braided types share the innovation of increased rigidity.

Even cored wicks trim at the top of the flame, or when the air currents whip it around. A well-designed prayer candle with a zinc wick can burn continuously for days.

So it has always been possible to design completely self-trimming candles. However, the candle mixture and the chemical treatment of the wick also determines how much it curls, how easily it trims, and whether it accumulates unburned material at the tip. The design issue is greatly complicated by hard-to-burn container blends, soy waxes and gobs of fragrance oil, each with different burning qualities.

There's also the issue of candle dimensions. A large wick doesn't naturally trim down to a small flame that's suitable for a glass container. A 4 inch wide jar with one wick is pretty much automatically a high-maintenance candle and a lot of people are going to have a less-than-ideal experience with it.

Edited December 23, 2009 by topofmurrayhill

[lsbennis]

Is it even possible to make a totally maintenance free candle? Can you actually get a candle to never soot or mushroom if not burned in the ideal way?

I think any of us can make a great candle and get it to burn without soot or shrooms if the proper care is given to the candle, but not if it is left to burn unchecked!

[topofmurrayhill]

Is it even possible to make a totally maintenance free candle? Can you actually get a candle to never soot or mushroom if not burned in the ideal way?

It's possible to make a totally self-trimming candle that maintains a good flame height and can be burned for long periods of time without sooting (much) or overheating. You can accomplish it with pillars, votives and jars. It just takes a lot of testing and you have to be willing to mess with all aspects of the design, from wax selection or blending to wicking to fragrance.

Not everyone is going to put in the work or be so flexible with every variable. It's not a bad thing to make a candle that requires the wick to be trimmed. I just think candlemakers should take more responsibility for creating robust designs that work well for the greatest number of people, and maybe not be so quick to blame candle users if their instructions aren't followed to the letter. Single-wick a 4 inch candle and you pretty much know what to expect.

[radellaf]

With votives, of course, the holder is going to complicate things. I have a beautiful holder, but it curves in a bit on the top, and so the LX14 wicks that otherwise work will smoke. I have to step down to LX10. In a standard votive holder that will work OK, but sometimes not melt to the edge. (IGI Votive blend)