Multiple candle wicks

[Tave]

Is there a guideline of when to use multiple candle wicks? I made a soy wax container candle with a 4 in diameter that doesn't burn to the sides of the container. Do I need more wicks?

 

[topofmurrayhill]

Yes, it's very difficult and often impossible to properly single-wick soy wax in a 4 inch container. Try two wicks, but they should be MUCH smaller. You might have to order wick sizes that you didn't think you needed. To make sure the wicking is good, be sure to burn the candle in stages (3 to 5 hours) until you reach the bottom. Also keep in mind that you don't need to get full melt pools from the beginning, and it will usually be better wicking if you don't. It's okay to see hang-up on the sides if it cleans up by the end when the candle is usually burning hotter.

 

[Tave]

Thank you for the advice. I definitely will try it in my next soy/container candle.

 

[michealmike]

Yes, it's very difficult and often impossible to properly single-wick soy wax in a 4 inch container. Try two wicks, but they should be MUCH smaller. You might have to order wick sizes that you didn't think you needed. To make sure the wicking is good, be sure to burn the candle in stages (3 to 5 hours) until you reach the bottom. Also keep in mind that you don't need to get full melt pools from the beginning, and it will usually be better wicking if you don't. It's okay to see hang-up on the sides if it cleans up by the end when the candle is usually burning hotter.

I also agree with you, thanks

 

[HappyGoNaturally]

I made some cute 4+" holiday mini pies last year ... if I can figure out how to post a pic I will try to share it. Anyway, with GW415 in the base and mixed w/ paraffin for the top decorations, I used four 2/0 (not #2!!) cotton square braid wicks in the center of the candle, spaced about 1.5 inch apart so they formed a square in the center. It worked nicely!

 

[HappyGoNaturally]

I'm having a bit of trouble uploading the pic of the candle I mentioned. So, I just went to read on another thread about uploading photos. I'm using photobucket, so I'm going to try again, but I'm not sure if it's going to work.




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Okay, it worked!! Anyway, you can see I've got four little wicks in there.

I'd like to say that using multiple wicks should be done with extreme caution & always test burn.

As a guideline, for instance, in this case, the 2/0 wicks in soy burn in about a 2+" diameter, so if you envision a 2+" circle with each wick as the center point, the circles (melt pools) would overlap, but not over extend outside of the candle.

It can be tricky and I see far too many examples of people using multiple wicks that look very dangerous to me, which is why I avoid them, but in the case of this candle design, I couldn't get it to burn right without using more than one wick, as it's a shallow candle and I didn't want it to be a torch with a huge wick.