# wicking tip from the school of Hard Knocks :)



## berkshire bee (Jan 28, 2007)

I seem to learn a lot by doing things the hard way, but at least I catch on after a while. I mentioned in another post that a customer wanted tealights with cotton wicks and no wire. I made 60 by pouring into rubber molds with pins, removing pins, cutting short wicks to length then dipping the tip in melted wax, and "rolling" between my fingers so I could thread it through the hole. Then I slid a wick clip over the wick ( In my first test burns without clips the wicks fell over when the candle burned low enough to just be melted wax)
I pressed the wick clips into the candle and crimped them. After a few hours of work I thought "This is so not worth all of the effort for this little money."
Today we were pouring tapers, votives, and pillars. I had some melted wax left over, so thought I'd do a few batches of tealights. This time I got a little smarter (I didn't say smart) I oured with the pins in. When they were cool enough I pulled them and slid a wick pin over each mold pin and pressed it in. This assured that it was perfectly lined up with the hole. Then I waxed the end of the wick and threaded all of the candles on the wick. It was an easy matter of crimping the wick pin and cutting off the wick on down the line. It went 10 times faster. This is the best I've come up with so far. I'm sure you veteran candle makers are probably laughing at my follies, but maybe this will help someone else find an easier way.


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## bee crazy (Oct 6, 2005)

berkshier bee, I'm sorry for your grief. You brought up some interesting questions and to be honest I never worried about a votive before having the wick falling over. We don't do tea lights but it sounds you have a handle on it. I decided to burn a small votive today to see if it is objectionable.
thanks for sharing.


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## bee crazy (Oct 6, 2005)

*what I found*

Hi berkshire bee,
I burned a small votive today after your post on wicks and wick clips. We use a urathane votive mold for our votives. We have threaded a standard 2/0 cotton wick in these molds and never worried about a stand up wick. After reading your post I decided to burn one down to see what the waste might be. To my suprise the candle extenguished when all of the wax went molten, I let the wax cool and when it harden I dug it out of the candle glass. I was suprised that about 1/4" of wax was still availble to burn but couldn't because of the wick loss.
I am going to rethink my votives here, I appreciate you bringing this problem to my attention as I really hadn't given it a thought. I am committed to giving my customers the best quality product I can make so I will fix this problem.
I'll let you know what I end up doing.
Thanks again,


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## berkshire bee (Jan 28, 2007)

bee crazy, So I guess some good did come from my trials and errors. That's what I love about these forums. With the wick clip, pretty much every drop of wax burns. The ones I used were the square ones from Betterbee. I haven't tried round ones. berkshire


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