Beeswax Candle Rolling and Pouring Techniques

Most candle makers expect a printed chart to name the right wick and expect beeswax to burn like the soy or paraffin wax they poured before, and neither expectation survives a first test burn in a real kitchen with a real thermometer and your own wax.

The suppliers' own wick charts say so: the sizes listed are for beeswax only, and mold style, dye, and fragrance each change the size a candle needs. This book treats every chart as a place to begin and teaches the test burn that settles the question, three to four hours at a time, with the wax hardening between burns. No chart can know your wax batch, your mold, or your colorant, so every size here is called a starting point, and the same habit runs through rolling, pouring, and dipping.

What the Test Burns Actually Show

• A rolled candle about 1 inch wide has three published starting wicks, 1/0, 2/0, and #2, and only the burn tells you which one your wax wants.
• A 3 inch pillar sits on the border of two published wick sizes, so the book pours small test pillars with both before it commits a full pour.
• Beeswax shrinks little, so a poured pillar needs its crater topped up once or twice, not the four or five times other waxes can demand of you.
• Hotter is not better: wax past 185 F may darken, and a dipping vat that runs too hot will not build a coat on the wick however many times you dip.
• A tunnel in the first burn usually points to a wick too small for the width, or a candle put out before the melt pool reached the edge of the candle.
• Plain wax comes first, because added color and added scent each change the wick a candle needs, so each gets its own test burn and its own log entry.

• Four rolled candles, from a straight starter to a wide pillar rolled from two full 8 by 16 inch sheets, each with a test wick pair.
• Four molded pillars, 2 to 4 inches wide, including a two-tone pillar poured in white and yellow beeswax, with wax weights worked out.
• Three dipped sets: a classic taper pair, four short votives, and a taper pair overdipped in a second shade, with a dip log to copy.
• Sixteen chapters, with wick sizing tables, round pillar mold wax weights, a project index, and troubleshooting tables for each method.