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Candle making question: at which temperature should you pour wax?

...well, it depends on the wax!


I've been making candles for 3 years now and I have experienced several problems myself before finding the right temperature to end up with flawless nice candles.


If you decide to make candles: take your time, use a thermometer and check the temperature of your melted wax before pouring, always!


It happened to me several times that, because I was in a rush, I poured the wax soon after I have melted it and I ended up with really ugly candles!

If you pour at high temperature you may end up with fragrance loss (evaporation), frosting (this is a frequent problem with soy wax), massive shrinking (not good for container candles), cracking on top. If you pour at a very low temperature you can have jump lines, wax can start to solidify in the container and so on...

Full post on FROSTING HERE.

In my experience, buying certified frosting-resistant soy wax only partially limits the problem...

Two golden rules to avoid frosting:
1) do not overheat the wax
2) pour the wax at the right temperature


I'll tell you what works best for me to avoid the above-mentioned issues, but you really need to test, test and test with small-scale experiments before going big! 👌


In my experience, for soy wax, the best temperature is, with no exceptions, around 52-55°C. 
For paraffin is around 65-68 °C if you want a smooth surface, 60-62 °C if I have to pour it on soy wax chunks (otherwise they melt), and stick to 55-58 °C if you want to obtain 'jump lines' (click this LINK to discover what jump lines are)

Pillar with jump lines
Pillar with smooth surfaceFor container candles: I'm usually very satisfied with the results obtained with the above-mentioned tricks, but if I still have cracking on top or an uneven surface, my heat gun comes in handy!


Etichette:

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