Candle Making

by Ian Peacock

The art of making candles is almost as old as civilised mankind itself! Certainly there is documented evidence of the use of candles, in the records of most of the ancient civilised societies, at least in the Northern and Southern parts of the world, where long dark nights rapidly brought on the need for light if any thing was to be done in the hours of darkness. They are less well known in warmer climes, where the longer hours of daylight made them less of a necessity and the hot climate tended to make the tallow or wax go soft and runny accordingly many of the equatorial areas came to rely on the oil lamp.

In the Northern hemisphere and in Europe in particular, there are paintings on cave walls and Egyptian tombs, depicting candles and, although there have been changes over the years, particularly in the materials that are in use, the techniques used all those years ago, remain valid today.

Early candles were usually made from tallow, an animal fat, not unlike suet, most often obtained from sheep. Tallow candles burned with a great deal of acrid smoke but they were both reliable and inexpensive, making them the mainstay of the large proportion of households. Wax candles burnt without the smell, and the smoke, and although they are equally as old, they were a great deal more expensive, for natural waxes were not in common supply. Beeswax was used for candles for the wealthy, and particularly in churches, monastery's and other Holy places.

With the development of the petroleum industry, vast quantities of new fuel products came to hand, and one of them, in particular, paraffin wax, has remained the mainstay of the candle industry, ever since.

Today, as hobbyists, we still use the time honoured manufacturing techniques but have been able to refine them and add to them in a manner that our ancestors could hardly have imagined. Despite the advent of electric light, many of us still chose to regard candle light as a romantic and highly social form of illumination.

Of course, we make candles as a leisure pursuit and few of us have the need to keep a commercial eye on what we are making, as did the candle makers of yesteryear whose living it was. Accordingly, we are able to spend more time and wider skills, in making much more lavish and highly decorative candles and while this epistle might well whet your whistle, and get you going, this is really only a starting point. When you have exhausted all of the possibilities contained within this august journal, and albeit, with your feet firmly on the lower rungs of this particular ladder, you will find plenty of advanced techniques available to you in books and courses upon the subject.

(For some lavishly illustrated reading matter on the subject, see our book list elsewhere on this website.—-Ed.)

So where do we start?

Well, a little bit of background knowledge never comes amiss, so here goes! From the point of view of simplicity, candles today, are made from two basic materials wax, and gel. Gel candles are a more recent innovation and can be discussed first.

As the name suggests, gel candles are “jelly like" in form, and, therefore, are rarely self supporting. This pre-supposes that they have to be supported “in" something. Commercial gel candles, common, these days, in gift shops and pot pourri stores, usually come in small glass or plastic vases, cups or other decorative containers. From the home candle makers point of view, almost any container will do. Chopped off wine bottles (see my feature on bottle chopping a couple of issues ago!), make ideal subjects, whilst a trip to your local car boot sale is likely to provide a wealth of small vases, wine glasses, etc., etc. Even cut down tin cans, (mind the sharp edges!), suitably decorated with an air pen, make excellent containers.

Having obtained your container, get yourself a tub or two of candle gel, (from your local Hobby's dealer—where else?) and just follow the instructions!! These gels soften in hot water, although to be fair, the bulk of a large tub of gel does mean that it does not go soft instantly. Bring a suitable sized saucepan of water to the boil and remove from the heat. Remove the lid from the tub of gel and sit it in the water, taking care that the water does not come near the top of the tub, and equal care not to scald yourself! Bring the water back to the boil and simmer for about 15-20 minutes, until the gel is totally runny. Test the gel every few minutes and keep an eye that the saucepan does not burn dry.

While this is going on, sort out the wick, which comes with the gel, or can be bought separately, and support it (them!—there can be more than one wick!) in the relevant position needed in the finished candle. A little ingenuity will soon show how to support the wick in the right place. Most gel wicks are already coated with the gel but if you have bare wick, then taking care not to burn yourself, dip the wick in the hot, runny gel, for a few seconds, remove and let cool. (long tweezers are handy here!) Finally, pour the hot, runny gel into the container and leave to set.

For different coloured candles, it is usually best to use different coloured gels! No! I'm not being facetious, I'm sure that there are those amongst us who have learnt the secrets of colouring clear gel, with other colourants, but, so far, I've only experimented with blending the same brand of clear and coloured gels!

Hints and tips time now!

Bend an old wire coat hanger to form a loop that fits around the underside of the lip in the gel tub, to enable you to pick it up and pour it out, while keeping fingers away from the 'ot stuff! Stand the container in a bowl of cold water to reduce the cooling time, or even put the full (and still hot!) container in the 'fridge! Use several different coloured gels, say, 1" at a time, to make multi layered candles. (You let each layer cool first, or the colours all run together!)

Learn to experiment, lean the container to one side and produce layered colours on the slant, standing it up straight only for the final layer or carefully, and with patience, deliberately let one colour run into the other. Careful timing, reference the cooling cycle, will enable you to control just how much the colours run together.

Wax candles, these days, are mostly cast in moulds, at least the primary examples are! More adventurous candle makers use freehand and sculpting techniques of amazing variety, that really fall outside of the scope of this introductory feature.

Moulds for candle making fall roughly into two types, rigid and flexible. Rigid moulds were traditionally made from glass or metal but today most moulds for the home candle maker are made in tough, heat resistant plastics.

Flexible moulds tend to be made from one or more of the many varieties of rubber. These moulds offer the user the choice of ornate shapes, many of which, because of the complex and ornamental exterior, would be impossible to extract from a rigid mould, once the wax had solidified. The rubber, having a degree of “give", will stretch enough to enable these compound shaped candles to be withdrawn from the mould.

Whichever mould type you choose to use, the wax, and the way that it is melted, poured, and hardened, is pretty much common. Today, with the exception of the serious candle maker, who knows what they are doing, and who has gone down the more esoteric materials path, most of us begin with proprietary candle wax.

As stated, this is predominantly refined paraffin wax but may contain other additives, to promote cleaner and longer burning. For simplicity, it is usual to buy this wax in the form of bags of beads, as this approach promotes easier and quicker melting. Wax can be bought in it's natural colour, (white), or ready coloured. However, many people prefer to buy the heavily pigmented “coloured wax" discs, that can be cut into small pieces and added to the molten white wax. This way, enables you to control the depth of the colour tint, or even to mix colours to the desired shade. Trial and error will quickly show the results, here, but be warned, these candle dyes are strong and you usually need far less than you at first imagine to get the desired colour!

While on the subject of adding colour, why not also add aroma? Candle oils, added to the molten wax, produce pleasant scents, as the candle burns.

Perhaps this is the right place to curb our enthusiasm for a moment and consider the safety aspect. Candle making is no more dangerous than any other hobby. However, the perils of hot wax are not something that you should disregard.

If at all possible, avoid heating the wax in a container, directly over the heat! It can be done, with the greatest caution, but if the wax becomes even slightly over hot, it will vaporise and can burst into flame, much like a chip pan!! Better all round, if you stick to indirect heating.

This is best accomplished by melting the wax in an old tin can, within a saucepan of hot water. Bring the water gently to the boil and simmer, as the wax beads in the can gently melt. This method ensures that the wax can never reach a temperature greater than the boiling point of water, and does not, therefore, vaporise.

Even here, there is room for refinement and the use of a regular cooking thermometer, will enable accurate checks on the wax temperature to be made. Some waxes and some candle making techniques, maximise on working the wax at different temperatures for different given effects, and the outlay on a good quality kitchen thermometer, is not outrageous and is well worth while.

Hot wax, even if only at the boiling point of water, can still cause a nasty burn if spilt onto the skin and if the skin is hairy, like mine, you can't just brush it off, as it sticks to the hairs as it cools.!! So be careful! Try fixing an old file handle to the side of the tin can, with a screw from the inside, to aide in handling and bend a lip into the rim of the can to assist in clean, mess free, pouring.

So what about the actual making of the candle?

Well, again, just follow the instructions, (Which for the Hobby's wax are on the rear of the card in the packet, not at all obvious. If, like me, you just snip off the corner of the pack to pour the beads out gently, you won't even find the instructions 'till you come to throw the empty package away!!)

All candle wicks need to be primed, and raw wick, as bought, may not be. If this is the case, then to prime it, simply dip the wick in the molten wax for a few seconds, then remove, pull taut and allow to cool.

Moulds could bear a little attention before use. Whether rigid or flexible, they could benefit from a wash in warm soapy water, rinsing and drying. They can also do with some mould release on the inside, before the wax is poured in. This can be a proprietary substance, although, in many cases, a light smear of washing up liquid will work almost as well. Most rigid moulds will be free standing but most flexible moulds will need to be supported, while the wax is poured and allowed to cool. Such supports are easily fashioned from cardboard or scrap balsa wood.

Flexible moulds, being made from latex based products, will not last for ever. They need to be carefully handled in use and equally carefully stored, between uses. Dust them down, inside and out with talcum powder before putting them away and keep them in a cool place, out of the light. All moulds will need the wick threaded through a hole at the end of the mould. This hole will inevitably leak hot wax, as it is then at the bottom of the mould when pouring commences! It is recommended that a small piece of modelling clay be packed around the hole, (and the wick, where it emerges from the hole), to overcome this problem.

When the mould is inverted, i.e. the right way up for pouring, the extraneous length of wick need to be kept taut and centralised along the length of the candle. Most wicks, these days, come complete with a “wicking needle", and this can be pushed through the wick, flush with the end of the mould and used to position the wick. Alternatively, scraps of balsa wood and rubber bands do the job just as well.

Now is the time to pour the molten, coloured, perfumed wax, into the mould. Pour moderately quickly but above all smoothly and without spillage. Return the tin can to the hot water to keep the wax molten. As the wax cools in the mould you will notice that a skin forms on its surface and that the wax shrinks. Allow a few moments and watch this shrinkage. As the surface skins over, the shrinkage will continue beneath this skin, which will cause holes to occur inside the candle. Simply pierce the skin in a couple of places and top up this shrinkage with more hot wax. Repeat this step as often as becomes necessary.

Forced cooling can be achieved by standing the mould in a bowl of cold water, or even putting the mould in the 'fridge, although it is not wise to over force the cooling by leaving the candle in the 'fridge for too long.

Extracting the candle from its mould can sometimes be the most difficult part of the whole job! When the candle wax has completely cooled, warming the mould under running water from the hot tap will usually soften the outer face of the candle to the state, where a sharp tap on the face of the mould will cause the candle to break free from the mould walls and just slide out. With flexible moulds, the same hot water trick is used and the rubber mould carefully peeled back. In extreme cases, the mould may turn completely inside out but this situation can be reversed with the aid of a little washing up liquid, to act as a lubricant.

Due to the final shrinkage, the base of the candle is unlikely to be completely flat. In fact it will nearly always be concave and uneven. This state of affairs can be quickly remedied by cutting off the bottom of the candle with a small saw, or a serrated bread knife. Alternatively, you can flatten it on the sole of an electric iron.

It takes little imagination to consider the next step. Multiple coloured layered candles can be formed by repeatedly pouring small quantities of different coloured waxes into the mould, one after the other. The time that the previous layer is left to cool, will control the degree with which each colour runs into that of it's neighbour.

Tilting the mould, as stated earlier, will produce coloured layers on the slant and, above all, chucking all of the various left over colours into the mould while they are still molten and swirling them around, will result in a kaleidoscope effect.

There isn't space for me to go into the more advanced and adventurous routes of exotic candle making, here. Suffice to say that much lateral thought, brings with it amazing results. Indeed, one of the pictures shows a candle made by dropping the molten wax into cold, swirling water, resulting in it flowing with the swirls and cooling rapidly to produce the fern like fronds around the central core.

So there you have it! If you want some different candles, for use at meal or bed times, or just for artistic decoration, why not try making them yourself. It's fun and the end result is purely down to you and your imagination.