It's more than just lighting the wick and walking away. To maximize and lengthen the life of your hand poured candle, you'll need to take a bit of extra care. First and foremost is the wick- you've got to keep that sucker trimmed! If you don't, you can end up with all kinds of issues. When I say keep it trimmed, I mean literally before you light that scented beauty, make sure the wick is trimmed to the appropriate length. Every. Single. Time. Untrimmed cotton/hemp wicks will give off too big a flame as well as lots of soot. Guess where the soot ends up? All over your beautiful vessel! Untrimmed wooden wicks have flame and soot issues, too, but can also have a hard time even staying lit if not trimmed correctly. The correct length for cotton/hemp wicks is 1/4" and for wooden wicks 5mm. Don't worry, you're not the only one who doesn't always pay attention to candle care. Honestly, even though I know all of this I am sometimes lazy and don't bother trimming my wicks. And then I suffer the consequences and say all of the swear words when my candle doesn't perform as well as I know it can.
The other issue is the length of time you allow your candle to burn. Even if you've kept your wick properly trimmed, you need to be mindful of burn time for safety as well as quality. If, for example, you light your gorgeous Luxury Wooden Wick candle (shameless plug, it's my most favorite type of candle that I sell on this site) and only allow it to burn for, say, 30 minutes and then blow it out, there will probably be an issue. What happens is that the wax will have a small round pool of melted wax that does not reach to the sides of the vessel, surrounded by hardened and unmelted wax. The wax has a sort of "memory" in that when you go to burn it again the next time, it will struggle to reach the side of the vessel and result in a "tunneling" effect. This is especially true with very hard waxes like beeswax. With continued use like this, the candle will only have a small melt pool and tunnel down without ever fully melting to the sides of the vessel. To avoid this, make sure you burn your candle long enough to achieve a full pool of melted wax that reaches all the way to the sides of the vessel. The caution, however, is that candles should not be allowed to burn for more than 4 hours (I'm so guilty of not following this rule and am partially ashamed to admit it). "Experts" claim that it is dangerous to allow a vessel to be heated for so long because it increases the risk of shattering the vessel. I experienced this once, many years ago, in a cheap little candle that I'd purchased from a retail chain. I had let the candle burn in my bedroom, unattended, (yes, I'm an idiot on occasion) all day long. Listen, to defend myself, I was trying to 'set the mood' and have a beautifully scented room for some private time with the husband later on. But I digress...that's for another blog. So when I went upstairs before bed, I was shocked to see shattered glass and wax ALL OVER THE D@MN PLACE. Needless to say, there was no fun private time with the hubs by the time I was done cleaning shattered glass and wax out of my carpet. Lesson learned. Almost. Like I said, I still don't always follow the 4 hour rule but the candles I make are in the highest quality vessels I can find and I never leave them unattended. Moral of the story: do as I say, not as I do.
So here are some pictures of the DOs and DON'Ts of candle care:
The first picture is a properly trimmed wooden wick. In the second picture, you can see that the wax is nicely distributed and no soot is on the sides of the vessel or mixed in with the wax. That wick, however, will need to be trimmed a bit again before lighting it if I want the vessel and wax to stay nice and clean and the wick to remain lit. In the third picture, you will see a fully spent candle that has been properly taken care of throughout its beautifully scented life. Yes, it is normal to have remaining wax after the wick has been fully burnt.
In the above, the first two pictures show properly trimmed cotton and/or hemp wicks. The third picture shows the beautiful results of a properly trimmed wick throughout the life of the candle- isn't she purdy? (Yeah, I geek out over ridiculous stuff, whatevs)
Now for the hot mess express:
Oh. Em. Gee. Yuck city right there. In the first picture, that wooden wick is WAY too huge. If I were to try to light that puppy at that length, first off I'd be lucky if it stayed lit, but if it miraculously did there would be a soot party in the wax as well as the sides of the vessel. The second picture shows the fruits of my laziness. I clearly did not keep the wooden wick trimmed in my gorgeous vessel and the wax and sides were full of soot. Believe it or not, this picture is after my attempt to clean it all up- it was actually worse than that! The third picture shows another lazy episode with my double wicked (cotton or hemp, I can't remember) beauty that I failed to trim. Um, well, yeah, and I also let it burn for probably 8 hours at a time, too. The moral of the story remains the same: Do as I say, not as I do when I'm lazy!
As a side note, I should also mention that your brand new candle may show up with cracked wax. That's actually not a problem- it will all melt the same. Temperature fluctuations tend to do that as well as a good sturdy wooden wick. So don't freak out and think you've gotten a poor quality candle! I actually add a small amount of organic beeswax to all of my hand poured soy/coconut/palm wax candles to help lengthen burn time and harden up the very soft natural waxes.
So there you have it peeps! Happy burning!