Rushing the melt

Every stage in this book assumes you are melting wax with the patience it asks for, and it is worth being honest about what happens when you do not. Wax held too long over too much heat, or heated hard to save a few minutes, drifts past eighty-five degrees before you notice, and comes out of the pot visibly darker than it went in.

Push further, and a scorched pot can bring the wax close to its flash point, so a batch you were only hurrying becomes a fire you are fighting instead. A rushed melt does not just risk one ruined batch, either: wax that has discoloured or scorched is wax you cannot sell at full price even once it has cooled into a candle.