Thursday, December 27, 2007

How to dip beeswax candles

#1. Put on right clothing (pants, t-shirt, socks and shoes), get wax, chisel, hammer or mallet, and box. Sometimes wax comes in big blocks so you have to break it into smaller pieces. Put the block of wax in the box. Put on safety glasses. Put chisel on the wax block, and hit the chisel hard with the hammer (it may take a few hits for the wax block to fracture). If you have a small block it takes fewer hits to break into small enough pieces to fit into the jar. If it’s a large block you have to be patient (the big block of wax takes a long time to break).

Then you have to get the right equipment.

#2. Get a pot and a quart sized canning jar or a can (for the wax).
You have to melt the wax next.
#3. Put about two cups water in the pot and heat it until boiling. Turn the heat down so the water simmers. Remember, wax is very flammable and it's also very hot when it's melted. Be careful!

#4. Put the wax in the jar (canning tongs work well for this) and the jar in the pot with the water so the wax melts.

If you find a stick outside you can use it to stir your melting wax.

#5. While the wax melts you measure the wicking and cut it into lengths for two candles each and some extra wick to hang them by. For instance, we cut pieces of wick that were 14 inches long (6 inches for each candle + 2 inches to
hang them by.)

#6. Once the wax is all melted you can start dipping! But before you do that you have to get two ladder back chairs and a wrapping paper roll or a long cardboard tube. Take the two chairs and put them together facing away from each other then put the tube between the ladders so you can hang the wicks from the tube. Then you get to dip

#7. Mom is rolling out one of the soft candles on a piece of newspaper on the counter. This makes the candles straight if it's done several times.

Then you dip it in the molten wax. Just a little word for safety "Keep your fingers out of the hot wax!" #8. You go get one piece of wick and hold it in the middle so the two ends hang down. Now you take your little skinny wax covered wick and you go hang it from the tube so the ends hang down on either side. Repeat this until you use all your pieces of wick.

#9. To color the beeswax, if you use a block of dye, you have to break it into pieces to put it into your melted wax.

When the candles are about this big, we start cutting off the big drip that forms on the bottom of the candles just before we dip them again.

Here I'm hanging up my last set. I'll go back to the first set (we have eight here) to dip next.

Here the color is just starting to change. Most of the dye is in the bottom of the jar and we haven't stirred it because we enjoyed watching the color change.

When the candles get pretty big we have to continue to add pieces of wax to the jar to keep the level near the top. Sometimes it's a good idea to dip one candle at a time when the jar is really full.

Almost finished. We rolled them and trimmed the bottoms so they would be even and not lumpy.

1 comment:

Emily said...

I loved reading and seeing this!!
Thank you