10 Commandments of Candle Making
If you’re making candles, for hobby or profit, it can feel religious at times.
Not that candle making is a cult or anything (even if it feels that way at times), but instead a community organized around a fun craft. Whether it’s to save money as a heavy candle consumer, or perhaps to create art for others – these commandments will guide your path towards eternal fragrance.
1. Thou Shalt Invest In A Scale, Thermometer, and Pouring Pitcher
No workshop, big or small, is complete without the trifecta of candle making equipment.
Scale
Every supply except color is measured by weight for three simple reasons:
- Measuring a weight of wax, especially as flakes, is easier than a volume
- Wax specifications are percentage by weight, instead of volume
- The densities of wax and fragrance oil vary enough that measuring volume would create inconsistencies
Therefore, buy a scale that allows you to measure grams or ounces. If it also measures fluid ounces, that’s okay, but not needed (fluid ounces is a unit of volume, not weight).
Thermometer
A thermometer is the only way to accurately track and record the various temperatures in your process. Candle making is summed up as a game of heat management, and a thermometer is the best and kind of only way to accomplish that.
Thermometers typically exist as direct contact or infrared.
Direct contact means the thermometer measures temperature through submersion in the fluid. They need cleaning, but operate with a fairly high level of accuracy.
Infrared is contact-less (2020 buzzword of the year). It’s typically a gun with a trigger where you point and shoot and a temperature reads out immediately. They aren’t terribly imprecise, but you need to stir the fluid before taking the temperature for consistency (they only read the surface).
Pouring Pitcher
You don’t need anything fancy, but you need something to transfer your wax blend into your candle molds or jars.
Aluminum pour pots are popular because they can take a beating and don’t wear down from heat exchanges. They’re easy to clean, and you can use them in a double boiler or on direct heat too.
The alternative is typically a glass measuring cup. They aren’t intended for direct heat (unless allowed by the manufacturer). However, many chandlers melt down wax in a Presto Pot and then transfer to a pouring pitcher or measuring glass for mixing and final transfer to the candle.
2. Thou Shalt Calculate Wax & Fragrance Oil
If you make candles, they should be good candles.
Determining the correct amount of wax and fragrance oil (by weight) is only a manner of using some small math skills. In case you’ve already forgotten:
3. Thou Shalt Not Deliver Performance Without Safety
So many makers jump into the craft and start selling candles without understanding that successful candles really have two pillars:
- Performance, the hot throw, cold throw, and overall pleasant-ness of the fragrance in your candle or melt.
- Safety – the concrete, measureble metrics surrounding the overall trustworthiness of the product as a home fragrance.
One cannot live without the other, and safety is often discarded for many reasons. If you didn’t even realize safety was something you should build into your candles, read this incredible guide on safety testing.
But don’t allow impatience or arrogance be the reason an otherwise incredible invention accidentally harms someones property or burns them.
4. Thou Shalt Test Every Candle Design
Piggy backing off the third commandment, testing is key to establishing high quality worksmanship (workswomanship?) in the candle industry.
A few situations that should make you conduct a basic burn test:
- A new lot or batch of wax arrives in your shop. Lots distinguish the properties of a batch of wax – you can assume wax from the same lot will typically behave the same. New lots sometimes introduce slight changes in properties or behavior under the same conditions.
- You change the container or mold for your candle.
- Each unique fragrance oil and load needs testing, even in the same container.
- Every wax or wax blend needs testing.
- Wick adjustments need testing.
- Quality control in a product line. For instance, burn testing 1 in every 100 candles to ensure the design operates within your expectations.
5. Thou Shalt Build A Wide Portfolio Of Suppliers
Locking in on a single supplier doesn’t set you up for failure automatically, but the industry has a tendency of changing over time.
The idea that you should have a wide portfolio of suppliers for your work means buying from multiple companies for your product line where it makes sense. Putting all your eggs in one bucket means you live and die by that single suppliers ability to sell.
If you diversify, then changes or disruptions in the supply line don’t feel so bad.
Companies started during the 2020 pandemic may understand the value, especially with the container shortages near the end of the year. Relying on a single supplier means they become a bottleneck. Not to suggest you build an inefficient supply chain, but rather that you tackle the idea of supplies with intelligence and contingencies.
6. Thou Shalt Not Overload Wax
Both paraffin wax and soy wax are manufactured for candle making with specific properties.
One of those properties, is a maximum allowable fragrance load. What does this mean?
Wax can only contain so much fragrance. FO does not bind with wax chemically – it mixes into the structure. Too much fragrance in a candle will weep from the solid wax over time, it simply cannot hold that much oil.
But it goes beyond fragrance oil – wax cannot hold a certain amount of anything else either! Too many additives can overload the candle, disrupting your beautiful invention and destabilizing the entire structure.
7. Thou Shalt Create & Respect A Temperature Management Plan
Successful product lines understand temperature.
Managing heat well creates the best candles, assuming the Temperature Management Plan is well designed. What is the Temperature Management Plan?
In your notes and planning for a design, outline the following moments:
- Max Wax Temp
- FO Add Temp
- Color Add Temp (not as critical)
- Pour temp
- Curing Temp/Conditions
- Whether or not jars are
There’s a lot more to taking notes, but tracking your temperatures is a gateway habit to success. Especially pour temp. That sucker has a strong impact on overall sexiness post-pour.
8. Thou Shalt Not Use Only 1 Wax
While you may specialize in or enjoy only one wax type, deep learning in candles means you get to dabble.
Dabble away – wax is cheap and easy to try. Every supplier gives good starting points for melting, pouring, and curing so it’s really not a thing. When you have a decent system in place for making candles, you can seamlessly substitute a different wax.
Why should you dabble? Understanding more than one wax breeds insight into the wide world of opportunities in candle making!
Some waxes play well with others, some are best for specific types. All have a market and their own characteristics to conquer.
9. Thou Shalt Use Appropriate Materials
Twine, bark, plastic bottles and more sometimes show up in a run-of-the-mill Pinterest post for candle making.
Stay away from everything that burns or isn’t designed for heat.
Many amateur candle makers misunderstand the importance of using only approved materials for the craft. Don’t play with fire, even though we’re literally creating fire machines.
10. Thou Shalt Be Generous
Candles are a gift to humanity that come from deeply rooted traditions.
While the pursuit of profit isn’t bad, your process will inevitably require opinions and “extra” candles not appropriate for sale. At this point, you can take on the greatest reward this craft has for chandlers and give your candles away.
Not only does sharing candles with others help build your brand, it allows you to gather valuable feedback from people to help you measure the unmeasurable – hot throw!
Gauging the scent performance of a candle by yourself is hard – we’re nose blind and solo. Many different smells permeate everyone differently. What you find light and pleasuring, another may find overwhelming or straight up disgusting.
But the bottom line is that generosity and selflessness serves your heart more in the end anyways.
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