It is autumn now, and the season is best for certain hobbies to start up, including woodworking in the shop where the temperature in the summer is a bit much for hand planing and sawing, or other kinds of work that results in a lot of activity and heat buildup. The house is cooler, too, and that’s where I have my wax supplies for candle making. My colonial candle molds are tin, authentic to the time period, and make three-quarter inch by six-inch-tall candles. I have one inch by nine-inch-tall tapers, too, but only one mold that makes six at a time. I am far fonder of the six inch probably because of my candle stands and lanterns are made for that size, and I have a whole load of holders to make stands of my own with that are also three-quarter of an inch in size. So, for the six inches, I have half a dozen molds that make six candles each, allowing me to make 36 in a pour. I also have a few various silicon molds of various shapes for things like little beehive candles, and wax bars that I can sell to apply to hand tools and thread and the like for woodworkers and sewers and leatherworkers. And now that I have written it, I want to have a pumpkin patch next year, and I think I will sell each pumpkin with a beehive candle to put in it when it is made into a Jack-O-Lantern. Something to ratchet up the game a little.
I have a huge brewer’s vat for melting wax in. I bought it about a year ago now and left it on for something like seven months straight over last winter so I would not have to melt all the wax in it to get started at making candles on any particular day. I also used it to help keep the chill off in the room upstairs where I keep it. After all, a huge vat of melted wax ought to do something against that. And that heat is why I shut it off over the summer! I didn’t need the extra with as hot at is tends to get upstairs in our house when the summer sun shines down on our roof. So it has sat with the wax hard and cold for several months now till Saturday, when I switched it on again for the first time since spring.
It did not take the element long to come up and the display to read 142-5 on the temperature. I kept the lid on, as always, because I wanted the heat trapped inside, and I also don’t like the idea of house dust getting into it. That’s how I left it from early Saturday morning. Sunday has come and gone, and when I checked it then, it was still a hard lump of wax in a vat. It was warm at the bottom though, and the sides were warm up to about halfway up. That was Sunday morning. This morning, I was able to push through the bit of wax that was caved in at the top from when it cooled in the spring. Wax changes in density with large swings of temperature. Even in a three-quarter-inch taper candle mold, wax will shrink enough as it cools to require filling again to top off the volume of the wax poured in the mold. It cools on the outsides first and leaves a hollow in the middle which has to be filled. As the wax int he vat cooled it cracked and left a large divot in the center that was weak when the heat came up from the bottom, and with some effort and a pair of scissors I was able to break that out and drop it down into the hot wax below.
I covered the vat with its lid and left it with a sort of volcano of hot wax in the middle and several inches of colder wax still caked around the edges in the hopes that now the heat will break through and trap under the lid enough to get that cake to melt off. When I was pushing with the scissors the whole cake seemed to have given a little and the hot wax pushed up through the hole in the middle. The hole is three or four inches across, and the volume coming up only rose half an inch or so, and I did not want to keep pushing it because I did not want my hands suddenly jolting into the vat of hot wax. I had already got a splash up that covered them once.
So, as of seven o’clock on Monday morning, October 13th, I am still waiting for the wax to finish melting that I put on early on Saturday. My plan is to string the molds and pour tapered colonial candles to list on our websites. Obviously, I will make a few mistakes to keep for us. Business is business, after all.
I have a second vat that is much smaller, and the temperature does not regulate well in, and I have filled it with wax that has come out and hardened on the table at the first one. I don’t want to introduce unclean bits of wax there, and dirty up the works. Much rather keep that separate for personal use or even tool wax as it is not like it is horrible filthy when it goes in. It does have a tendency to overheat, though, and a bit of the wax can burn at the bottom. That’s also something I would rather not introduce to a candle I am going to sell.
I plan on working today. Not at the candles, but in town. I have obligations in Preston tomorrow, and will be here throughout most of the day, so I will work then. The wax should be fully melted by then, and I will even be able to use the ladle that is stuck in the hard wax on the side still. It is fully metal and should be heating up and breaking loose before the full amount of wax melts on the sides.
The kids are off school today because of parent/teacher conferences. One of them has a single B, and the rest are all A’s between them, so we think we will not be attending today. That gives me a full stretch of time to go to work. I should be okay to just start late today, as if it were a weekend. I am thinking of making a list of people in the city I might want to give a pair of candles to, to get them aware that I make them, and as a thanks for being kind to me while I have been fumbling my way back into the work-a-day world. There are a couple I can think of who greet me as a friend when I come to their shops and genuinely ask how I am doing.
Giving mind to all this, I am now thinking of the stands and the chandelier that I have made, and that I should get some more made. There is only a little over two months left till Christmas, believe it or not. Once again, I could have hand made a Christmas, but it is getting too late to do everything I would need to. But there are a few things. I really need to rework my year, and plan better. I also need to try to fit in some photography in all this, and some leatherwork. My many crafts I enjoy!