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Create & cure candles
You can’t burn test without having candles ready!
You should substantially cure any candles primed for testing. What does this mean? Wait the recommended amount of time for your primary wax blend before setting up a burn test.
A lot of candle makers lack patience to wait for their candles to cure or they don’t believe in polymorphism, but wax changes dramatically while it hardens.
Natural waxes, like soy or palm, structurally harden over the course of their life as crystals continuously form. They are sensitive to temperature fluctuations, which is also the leading cause of frosting.
With natural waxes, the first two weeks are critical to its performance and stability.
They harden over time, so test results from early in their life tend to be misleading (on the side of being too small).
Most paraffin is relatively inert and extremely stable, which means they don’t change much after their initial hardening. Burn testing paraffin after 24 hours will yield similar results to a two week burn test.
Use this guide as a starting point for curing:
Pick a test type
Most tests capture information about safety or performance. Each has nuances worth considering.
There are a variety of safety tests you can conduct:
- Standard burn test (described in this article)
- Chaos test/power burn
- Common behavior testing
Performance testing, also known as does-this-candle-smell-as-strong-or-as-good-as-I-want-it-to testing, is hard to do with multiple candles consistently, unless you have multiple areas in your workshop (or home) with expected hot throw results.
It is easier to test this in isolation (read: in someone’s home) after a candle passes a safety test.
Prepare test area
If you intend on burning multiple candles, prepare a location where each candle has 7 7/8″ (just round up to 8″ if you don’t want to be unreasonable) of space around it.
The room should be 68 to 86 °F (20 to 30 °C) to provide a consistent atmosphere for burning in as well.
Place the candles in a tray big enough to hold the entire melt pool if the container cracks or the candle tips.
Also, clearly mark each test candle with information about it’s wick and any distinguishing information about the wax blend that might be helpful.
Create a consistent environment if you intend to test the hot throw – for instance, many candle makers test the hot throw of a single candle in a medium sized room with no drafts while gathering the opinion of every “smell critic” in the area (more opinions are better than one given the nature of scents).
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