Come and See!

One of the things we were most excited about when we opened the workshop/store in 2009 was the opportunity to share our love of hand-crafting green products, and we've been thrilled to host several tours of student groups and clubs as well as other groups of "kids of all ages." 

Spring 2010 Tour with White River Home EducatorsIf your group would like to visit us, please call our shop or request your tour here and we'll get it scheduled.  Normally lasting about 45 minutes, we discuss the benefits of using organic raw materials, living "green," the ingredients of a candle, and then we actually make candles with the group, inviting hands-on participation, and letting visitors take home a tea-light of their choice.

In the meantime, enjoy this "virtual tour" of our process...

Candlemaking 101, the Middle Davids Way

First, welcome to our workshop.  You can see our pouring tables with the wax melter in the center, fragrances below and dyes on the wall to the right.

The first thing to consider when making candles is "What are my ingredients?"  We say there are five things you need to make a candle:

• Fuel  - wax, which makes up nearly 90% of the mixture that makes the candle.
• Ignition - wick, to draw up the fuel and allow the fuel to mix with oxygen from the air so it will combust or burn
• Container - If you don't want a mess, you need either an external container, or to ensure that you have a hard wax and undersize the wick slightly so that the outer layer of wax becomes the container
• Fragrance - The vast majority of candles today are not just for illumination, but to add fragrance to the room in which they are placed
• Color - Although some people prefer color-free candles, there is quite a bit of evidence that color does influence our other perceptions, and can actually improve our sense of the fragrance -- when we see a lavender candle and smell lilacs, our minds "click" and we have a stronger experience of the candle.

Dan preparing to add soy wax to melterOur first step is to add wax to our melter and let it begin to come to temperature.  We use an all-natural soy wax that melts at about 122 degrees (cooler than your hot water tap at home), but we bring the temperature to 150 degrees to improve the ability of the wax to absorb color and fragrance, and to allow it to crystalize more evenly as it cools (rather than "freezing" to the inside of the glass container, which causes uneven color).

While waiting for the wax to come to temperature, it's time to prepare our containers and "wick" them up.  We use hollow woven cotton wicks  (no metal wires, which automated factories like so they don't have to manually "center" the wicks after pouring, but which can contain harmful pollutants and clog the wick).  The famous "Wick-a-ma-jig"Our wicks have zinc safety tabs on the bottom which extinguish the flame about 1/8" from the base of the candle to ensure there is no contact between the flame and the glass.  We use a hot-temp glue to adhere the wick tab to the center of the container base so the candle will burn evenly all the way to the bottom.  Our patent-pending (not really) "wick-a-ma-jig" enhances the process as you can see, allowing us to set the wicks in the jig, glue the tab and then set the glass in the jig without touching the hot glue itself.

With containers prepared and the wax at the correct temperature, it's time to draw off wax for our batch.  If we're making larger batches (20-50+ pounds), we'll actually Drawing Waxwork in the melter itself, but for smaller batches, we can work in 4 or 6 pound pour pots, or up to 15 pounds in our re-purposed commercial coffee urns.  Either way, we always draw off a few pounds of wax to mix in the dye.  We use concentrated liquid dyes and we want to be sure they are completely mixed in to the wax -- by working in Adding Dyea smaller pot, we can be sure none of the dye is "sticking" to the sides or bottom of the container, reducing color variation between batches.

With the color thoroughly mixed, we transfer the colored wax either back into the melter or to one of our mixing urns.Transferring to Urn  We'll draw additional wax to the desired batch size and continue mixing until the color is fully mixed.  Lots of folks believe you can't get strong color in soy wax, and admittedly, it is difficult to get vibrant color in an organic product, and the color is more fragile than in "plastic" paraffin wax.  But we've found that with patience (and a fair amount of trial and error testing) we can develop deep, rich colors.  Soy wax does have a tendency to "bloom" or develop "snowflakes" as the wax ages, but we use a very high quality wax that blends in small quantities of botanicals with the soy to minimize that process.  Some like the snowflakes, but we prefer a more uniform, creamy appearance, and typically can achieve that with little or no snowflaking in the wax.

Adding FragranceNext, we add fragrance.  We often see candle-makers claiming "double" or even "triple" fragrance loads in their candles.  Our approach is a little different.  Years ago, it was common to hear "one ounce fragrance per pound of wax," as the base recipe, or around 5-6% fragrance.  Many soy waxes are only rated to hold about 6% fragrance, and truly every fragrance varies depending on the various carrier oils that are used in the fragrance itself -- some are quite concentrated, some more dilute.  We don't really believe anyone is making soy candles at 15% plus fragrance -- and if someone did, what you'd likely find is a candle that would "sweat" fragrance and burn poorly.  The scent we enjoy isn't from the "burn" itself, but from the molten wax that "throws" the embedded fragrance from the wax pool.  Too much fragrance will literally go "up in smoke" causing sooting but not adding much to the fragrance experience.  We push our fragrances to 9-10%, which is right at the top of what the wax can hold in suspension -- we test for strong fragrance throw, and don't "top off" our candles with a thin layer of strongly fragranced wax covering a poorly fragranced candle as so many of the cheap imports do.  The result is a clean-burning strongly fragranced candle that lasts, which in our opinion is the real deal rather than catchy marketing hype.

Each Candle is Hand-PouredWith the fragrance fully integrated, we check temperature again and adjust if necessary - either allowing a little more time for heat or turning off the heat and letting things cool -- different candles like different pour temperatures -- we like to pour our larger candles at 150 degrees, but tend to pour smaller candles a bit cooler, and the wax melts even cooler yet.  Votives are the most difficult, believe it or not, because the heavy glass "swag" at the base causes them to cool less evenly.

Each candle is hand poured, and we typically allow a minimum of 24 hours for the candles to "cure."  Tea-lights can be "solid" in as little as an hour, Wixstixbut the crystallization process continues even after the candles appear "done" on the outside.  Because we don't use wires in our wicks, we place what we call "wixstix" (wick-sticks) on each candle to ensure the wick is straight and centered throughout the candle.

After the candles are fully cured, we trim each wick to 1/4", and add the lids.  Finally, we add a safety and identification label on the bottom of each candle and our main label with the fragrance name on the front.  Again, a hand made jig helps us position the labels consistently.  LabelingMany of our fund-raising or corporate gift clients also add a private label opposite our label that tells a little of their story, which we think is a fantastic idea and encourage at every opportunity.

If you'd like to visit our shop and experience our candlemaking first hand, give us a call or contact us here.  We'd also invite your comments and/or questions -- click here to share your thoughts.  Thanks for visiting!