The books / Candle Making / chapter 5 of 14
Reading the pool
All chapters
- The hardest of the waxes
- Never above eighty-five
- The wick chart
- The burn test
- Reading the pool
- Rolled tapers
- Dipped tapers
- Votives and tealights
- Pillars and the topping pour
- Container candles and the cure
- Bloom is not a flaw
- Rushing the melt
- Balms, salves, wraps and polish
- What a kilo is worth as candles
The melt pool from a burn test is not just a number, it is a diagnosis. A pool under six millimetres deep, or one that never reaches the container wall, means the wick is too small: the flame cannot deliver enough heat to melt a full pool, and the candle will tunnel down its centre, wasting most of its wax, unburned, around the sides.
A pool over thirteen millimetres, especially paired with a mushroom-shaped carbon cap on the wick tip or visible soot, means the wick is too large: it is drawing more fuel than it can cleanly burn. Either fault wastes wax, and both are avoidable.