Candle making

[Seaweed]

I have beehives so I get a certain amount of beeswax every time I look at them. I have been collecting it for a while & have been experimenting with making candles. I have worked out you can make candle wicks out of stripped finely plaited harakeke. I tried ti kouka as well but it does not work anywhere near as well. My question is is there a wick diameter that is supposed to be good for candles? I need to work out the size to plait the wicks as I am sure I am making them too big for the candles.

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

Um.. may I suggest you translate the maori for those here who don't know it???

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/211661/candlemaking_101_wick_it_wick_it_good.html?cat=7

and then below that. using the right wick.

Obviously this won't apply to you, but the principles are there.

and of course, there is a rolled beeswax candle just for show, on good old wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candle_wick

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_do_you_make_self_trimming_wick_for_candles

[Seaweed]

There are two different biological species of flax so I tend to use the Maori names instead of the latin ones to differentiate. Harakeke is phormium tenax which is the bigger more upright one. It gets red flowers & the seed pods point upwards. It has much stronger fibre & is the one you use for weaving. Ti Kouka is cabbage tree. It has good strong fibre & you can weave with it too.
I got the idea for using native fibres for candle wicks here
http://www.sbs.auckland.ac.nz/uoa/science/about/departments/sbs/newzealandplants/maoriuses/fibre/application/fire.cfm

[MinorityView]

I used to make beeswax candles, many years ago. If you want to make are really good, long-burning candle, don't use a mold, but dip it instead.

The first dip is to get all the air out of the wick, so you hold it under until it stops bubbling. After you pull it out, pull the bottom to make it straight and let it cool enough to stiffen. Then dip again, and bring it up fairly quickly, let it cool until the wax is no longer soft, then dip again. You just keep doing this until it is the thickness you want.

If you have a lot of wax, you can hang wicks over a frame: we used round frames used to cool cookies, you could make 10 or 12 candles at a time, depending on the size. You need some sort of weights on the bottom, otherwise they will slosh around and get hooked together. You also need a wide enough pot to lower the entire rack at once and another pot of hot wax so you can keep replenishing the first pot.

We also made poured candles for churches. These are the 14, 16 or 18 inch candles that end up on altars. The wicks for these were suspended from a bicycle wheel frame. The candlemaker used a ladle to pour wax over the wicks, one at a time, rotating the frame and twirling each wick to get the wax evenly distributed. Amazingly, once you got the hang of it, you could make really gorgeous, huge, even candles. Very impressive to watch--we used to go to fairs and give candle-making demos. We also had candle-dipping for the little kids.

But I don't know anything about the wicks, except that we used different sizes and types depending on what sort of candles we were making.

The only candles we did in molds were votives. And we never did the rolled candles, they don't really burn very well, IMO.

[Seaweed]

I dipped the candles but nowhere near as sophistocated as that. I just put a pot of boiling water on the stove with an empty tin in it with the beeswax in. I scored 4kgs of beeswax at the weekend for under $10 so I am going to be making candles galore shortly. My brainwave is I am going to make the wicks the same size at the ones in my beeswax candle I already have!

[MinorityView]

We were producing thousands of candles a year, and the equipment was pretty massive. Dipping one at a time in a double-boiler is fine for home use.

And your wick solution sounds good. Why not make one, try burning it, and then refine as necessary? The thickness of the candle is the main thing, as I recall. Thicker candle = thicker wick.