4 Laws Of Heat Management You Should Abide By When Making Candles
Building a bulletproof Temperature Management Plan is essential to candle making success.
You’re only as consistent as your last few batch inputs. Among them are temperatures for various events:
- Max temp
- Room temp
- Room humidity
- Pour temp
- Curing environment temp
These are merely the “planned” temps for your design, but there are a few rules you should respect while executing your Temperature Management Plan – here are four of them.
Use Only One Method To Measure Temperature
How do you measure the wax temperature?
New candle makers might not have a thermometer (and need to pick one up as soon as possible), but seasoned crafters probably have a few different tools for it – including glass thermometers or an infrared thermometer.
Each tool measures temperature, however using more than one method in a single instance could disrupt your consistency and create problems.
Why?
Although there’s no debating that temperature is a constant value – that is, that 150°F to Paul is the same as 150°F to Sue, different instruments for measuring temperature might not always agree. Let’s compare two of them for a better example.
Glass Thermometer
A glass thermometer takes temperature by submerging the glass bulb in the wax blend, causing the internal liquid to rise inside. A lot of math and chemistry is involved inside the instrument to map the bulb heat to the liquid’s rise inside.
Typically, these thermometers are fairly accurate, but require submersion in the fluid (and cleaning after use).
Infrared Thermometer
With an infrared thermometer, beams of infrared light are projected onto an object and the resulting energy is measured (and converted into a temperature).
They’re contactless and only measure surfaces, which is significantly different than a glass thermometer that measures under the surface.
So what’s the point of this rule?
Limit your thermometer choice to a single type when making candles. Try to only use a glass thermometer or only an infrared thermometer. Think about it: if one tool measures beneath the surface it’s probably going to be a little hotter than the tool measuring the actual surface!
Either instrument is okay to use, as long as you don’t switch halfway through a candle blend.
Excellent candle making means building consistency into every facet of your process, including how you measure factors like temperature. If you’re using different methods to measure temperature, you could end up with conflicting temperatures that screw up your heat management plans.
Maintain Wax Temp Below 200°F
As you melt wax down from a solid to a liquid, make sure to monitor your temperature closely to ensure the blend doesn’t exceed 200°F.
Extended exposure to more than 200°F can damage the physical properties of the wax, including the color and oil retention. Certain methods are much more conservative for heating wax, such as the double boiler method, whereas others can easily get out of hand if not kept under close watch.
Presto Pots, deep fryers, and hot plates can easily run you too hot if not carefully watched. Do not leave wax unattended during the melt phase.
Many refer to damage from temperature as “scorching” the wax. Not only is this bad for the wax, spilled or tipped wax could burn or damage people, pets, and property if anything happened.
What do you do if you exceed 200°F?
Most of the time, if you can return to a normal temp range it won’t matter. Keeping the wax at such a high temperature for a prolonged period, or crawling too high on the thermometer can cause damage.
But if you catch it early and get back to reality quick, you probably won’t suffer for letting your heat run away like that.
One Exception
The only exception to the 200°F rule is palm wax. Palm needs to be slightly above 200°F (somewhere around 205°F) for two main reasons:
- A higher average melt point than most wax
- To create the largest cooling requirements (to optimize crystal formation)
As with every heat management strategy, monitor your process and be careful when moving wax around to prevent injuries and accidents.
Stir Before Taking Measurements
Almost every heat source used to melt candles adds heat from the sides and bottom, which means the middle and top of the blend is usually cooler.
To your measurement needs to account for these differences. Fortunately, it’s easy to make your blend temperature-consistent by stirring prior to taking a measurement.
You should also stir periodically while heating to mix cooler blend areas with warmer for a more consistent profile too.
Even though warmer parts will circulate around on their own (think of how wind works), it doesn’t always perfectly circulate.
If your blend has hot spots (or cold spots) it could introduce craters below the surface of your candle. You can avoid problems by stirring – not just prior to taking temperature but periodically throughout the process too.
Place The Wax Blend Back On The Heat (If You Need To)
Think about how you make candles:
- Heat wax blend
- Add fragrance oil
- Stir for 1-2 minutes
- Pour blend into vessels
But what if your Temperature Management Plan calls for a pour temperature that’s higher than the wax blend after you’ve stirred the fragrance in?
For example, let’s pretend you add fragrance oil at 185°F and want to pour at 175°F, but after stirring the fragrance in for 1-2 minutes the blend is down to 170°F. What do you do?
Many beginners will attempt to pour right away, believing they missed their window of opportunity. Fortunately, there’s a better way!
If you miss your planned pour temperature at any point in the process, it’s okay to place the wax blend back on your heat source until it’s warm enough to pour.
The “right” temperature for pouring varies for every candle design, but you shouldn’t fret if your blend drops below your intended pour temp. In fact, if you pour pretty high it’s normal to miss the window after adding and stirring fragrance.
Why?
Fragrance and stirring are cool enough to drop the blend pretty fast. Hopefully not so low the wax begins to harden, but dropping 10°F – 15°F is pretty common.
Lost Fragrance Notes
Will returning the wax to heat damage or reduce the fragrance quality of the candle?
If you’re using essential oils, there’s a higher risk that long-term exposure to high heat will damage the hot throw, however returning your blend to the heat to increase it by 10-15°F is unlikely to disrupt your hot throw.
In the interest of safety and performance, properly stirring your fragrances into the wax creates a more consistent candle. Stirring also reduces any chance of oils pooling in areas of the hardened candle, which can erupt in flames during use (due to flash points).
But the common belief that flash points are connected to pour or add temperatures is a myth. Fragrance permanently loses notes when the temperature reaches the boiling point of that note, not the flash point.
Notes evaporate when they reach the boiling point, a direct correlation to volatility.
The good news? Once the fragrance is mixed with wax, the effective boiling point is much higher for a majority of the blend, since the wax properties come into play at the macro.
Conclusion
Heat management is a crucial skill for candle making.
If you can master your system and supplies in the realm of temperature, you can accomplish much more simply through consistency.
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