Hand Dipped Beeswax Candles

I am very fortunate to live in an area of South Australia where there is an abundance of small local businesses who sell amazing quality foods and items. We try to support local where ever we can! Our honey comes from the lovely Do Bee Honey down in Aldinga, and not only do they have fantastic honey, but they sell beautiful blocks of unfiltered beeswax. I may have a slight obsession with it! 

Recently I decided to try my hand at making some beeswax taper candles using the traditional method of candle making, hand dipping!

I used an old 4L olive oil tin with the top removed with a can opener to melt the beeswax in. The tin is placed in a saucepan of water which is acting like a double boiler. All up I melted about 4 1/2 500g blocks of wax into it. Melting from blocks takes a fair bit of time, took about 40mins for the wax to be fully melted.

I had some spare wick specifically for beeswax candles lying around in my boxes of 'stuff' from a previous candle making project. Using wicks made for beeswax is really important, as otherwise the candle won't burn as it should.

A length of wick, long enough for two candles is cut and then a weight is tied to the end of each wick to hold it straight as the dipping process is started. Normally hex-nuts or washers are used but I couldn't find any in the house, so I settled for old screws. The wick is held in the centre to form two even wicks and is dipped in the hot wax and allowed to cool between dippings.  Once there is enough wax is formed on the wick to keep it straight, the weights are cut off.

Keep dipping and cooling... I had 3 sets of double wicks going at the same time, so I would swap as they cooled down to dip another one. Slowly they grew in size. They weren't very straight but that wasn't an issue.

Once I reached my desired thickness [standard taper thickness] I stopped dipping and hung them to dry in my sewing room. I need to leave them to cure for a few weeks before use as the beeswax I used is very fresh wax.

Once they are cured, we'll be able to add them to our lovely thrift shop found candelabra which has been screaming out for some candles!