Candlestick to make fine candles

01 · THE VESSEL

As deep as the candle, wider than the ring

Here is the detail that decides whether you can use it: the wax has to cover the whole wick in one pass, so the vessel must be as deep as the candle is long and more than 16 cm across for the ring to fit.

That is why the double ring adjusts. If your pot is 30 cm deep, you set the rings and make 30 cm candles; the 60 cm maximum is only reached with a tall dipping vat and a lot of wax in it, because the bath has to be full.

02 · THE THICKNESS

The dips decide it, not the frame

A dipped candle grows layer by layer: dip, lift, let it set for a few seconds, repeat. The frame fixes no thickness at all — a two-centimetre candle is the same wick with many more dips.

What you do have to get right from the start is the wick calibre, chosen for the final diameter you are after: a thin wick in a fat candle drowns in its own wax.

03 · THE RHYTHM

Wax at temperature, and patience

Beeswax melts between 61 and 65 °C and is worked around 65-70 °C. If the bath is too hot, each pass melts off what you have just laid down and the candle never gains girth.

Between dips the layer has to set without going completely cold. And the twenty wicks on the ring are done at once, which is what makes setting up the bath worth the trouble.

04 · THE MATERIAL

Stainless, and why it matters

The whole frame is stainless steel: it goes in and out of hot wax dozens of times per session and you need to be able to scrape it when wax builds up.

Set wax comes off with gentle warming or by scraping cold; stainless takes both without pitting.

05 · BEFORE YOU BUY

It is the frame; the bath is yours to provide: