[Today’s run: Watson Road 3.5 miles]
We spent a bit of time today on making candles. We have 6 “votive” candle molds.
I use the old hotplate and an old aluminum coffee pot to melt down the wax. I have some thick cotton string that we dip in the wax and set it out on aluminum foil to harden. Then, I have some fine copper wire from an old CRT yoke. I make a little coil of copper wire starting at an end of the waxed string and making a spiral. Then we clip the waxed string to be about an inch longer than the molds are high. Those are our wicks. We test fit the wicks to make sure they stand up straight, bending the wire as necessary to get them to do so.
I watch the melting wax and try not to let it get overly hot. Just melted. I usually pour some molds while there is still hard wax in the pot, so not even all of it is melted. That would mean that the temperature of the wax is very close to the melting point.
I fill the molds to the top. In about a minute we can start to see a skin forming on the top of the molds. Then we put in the wick and stand it up. You have to kind of push it down and hold it just a second so that it will stay down. If you put the wicks in too soon they melt also and limp over. That’s why you don’t want the wax to be too hot.
Then we just wait. Some of our candles get a split down the middle near the wick. We are not sure if there is a bubble in there, or if we need to put some no-stick on the molds, or exactly what. We have been just melting these down again and redoing them.
After a couple of hours or so (be patient) the molds will be cool to the touch and we tap out the candles by bumping against the side of the kitchen counter. If they don’t come out easy we try putting the candle in the freezer for a while.
That’s it. We don’t buy the fancy zinc wicks or wick holders or whatnot, just do our own thing. It seems to work ok.
I would say we get one candle’s worth of wax for maybe 3-4 pints of honey (?), something like that. That is with our method of honey harvesting which destroys the comb (not spinning the honey out and reusing the comb like the big boys do). There’s no way that can compete with the 50 cent votive candles at Wal-Mart. But we have the wax and it is interesting as a hobby.
The picture is of new candles cooling in the molds and some waxed string laid out behind.
