Making Large Candles

I have posted previously on using The Candle Maker gadget and on my Candle Making Tips that I have learned in making my own candles. This time I wanted to apply those tips to making large candles.

I had learned about calculating how much wax I will need for my candles, how much fragrance to use and how to choose the right wick based on the width of the container rather than the height. I learnt that whilst The Candle Maker can only handle enough wax to make a 300ml candle at a time and takes 20 minutes to go through its cycle, the first batch has barely started to set again after 20 minutes so you can simply pour the second batch of wax on top.

I had bought a beautiful stained glass candle container with a coastal theme that had a 600ml fill volume. According to the guide that came with my wick assortment, you need to measure your container at its widest point and choose the appropriate wick size. My container was 120mm at the widest point and the largest wick size I had was for a 100-110mm container.

You can use multiple wicks to achieve the same burn. To calculate which wicks to use, simply divide the width of your container by the number of wicks. So for my 120mm container I could use 2 wicks and divide this into 2x 60mm widths or use 3 wicks and divide it into 3x 40mm widths. I thought that 3 wicks would look better in my container so chose the 3x 40mm option.

I had some Sandalwood Oil that I had brought back from a trip to Egypt some years ago that I love the smell of and decided to use this in my candle. I didn’t have enough left to make it purely a sandalwood candle but I knew that it worked well with Musk Oil. These oils were much darker in colour so resulted in a brownish wax mix.

You can refer to my Candle Making Tips for more detail of the process of calculating your requirements:

• got the right wax for making container candles: Soy Wax GW464
• selected my jar: large mosaic candle container
• measured the fill volume of my candle jars: 600ml
• calculated that for 10% fragrance load I will need: 600ml x 10% = 60ml fragrance
• selected my desired fragrance: Sandalwood and Musk
• decided on ratio of 30ml sandalwood and 30ml musk
• calculated the amount of wax flakes I will need: 600ml – 60ml = 540ml x 0.83 = 448g wax flakes
• allowed for the fill limit of The Candle Maker and divided into two batches: 2x 224g wax flakes each with 30ml fragrance
• measured the width of my candle jars: 120mm divided into 3 to use 3 wicks for 40mm widths
• selected the appropriate wicks for that width: 3x CN6 wicks

Now it is relatively simple to make my candle using The Candle Maker that does everything for me – see my previous post for more information on this gadget and how it works.

With this large candle, I learned a few more things:

• be very careful not to move the candle while it is setting and take care not to knock the wick holders
• if the finished top surface of your candle is important to you (e.g. you are selling it or giving it as a gift) then you can repair it by carefully using a hairdryer (preferably with a diffuser) to gently reheat the top few mm of your candle (I tried this a bit to see how it worked, but didn’t have a diffuser and didn’t have the need for it to be perfect)
• you need to experiment with how much fragrance oil can be added to a candle – this will vary according to the oil used (mine has beads of oil coming to the surface but that won’t matter for me)