candle wicking
Nov. 12th, 2019 07:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7I am posting this for the amusement of unicornduke, with whom I'm in the slow-mo midst of a giant flax seed-to-thread project (we're at the stage of having two years' harvests sitting in various barns, all at different stages of processing, though we've got tentative concrete plans to go further, in that my dad's got the schematics for a full set of processing equipment and we're going to meet up and build shit ~*soon*~) (he is on for Thanksgiving week sometime-- I'm probably getting into town around the 20th though I gotta finalize all those plans today-- so sometime in the ten days after that)--- ---- -- -
ANYWAY
last night during my sort of weird manic "I'm gonna learn all the things" state about candlemaking I Googled how to make a candle wick (expecting, like, what kind of cotton twine or thread to look for, how to prepare it, etc) and the very first result was this:
Joybilee Farm: How To Make Your Own Candle Wicking:
Yes this person seriously expects you to be so committed to using local resources that you're going to go out and plant flax just so you can harvest tow so you can process it and spin it to make wicks.
(Actually, you have to spin it and then use a lucet to make it into cord! which I do know how to do, actually, so I'll really do this, for sure, but holy shit, lady. And then you mordant it! These candles are going to be fucking gourmet. I was going to use paraffin but fuck that, I have to use beeswax I chewed myself, now.)
I mean, like, fair, now I'm probably going to do this! But how funny is that, to be the number one search result? I'm just imagining being, like. A normal person. And trying to learn how to make candle wicks, and being told to sow a pound of flaxseed over a 20x20 plot and wait 100 days, as step 1.
I love this and yet. And yet! Who in their right mind! This is great.
unicornduke, with whom I'm in the slow-mo midst of a giant flax seed-to-thread project (we're at the stage of having two years' harvests sitting in various barns, all at different stages of processing, though we've got tentative concrete plans to go further, in that my dad's got the schematics for a full set of processing equipment and we're going to meet up and build shit ~*soon*~) (he is on for Thanksgiving week sometime-- I'm probably getting into town around the 20th though I gotta finalize all those plans today-- so sometime in the ten days after that)--- ---- -- -ANYWAY
last night during my sort of weird manic "I'm gonna learn all the things" state about candlemaking I Googled how to make a candle wick (expecting, like, what kind of cotton twine or thread to look for, how to prepare it, etc) and the very first result was this:
Joybilee Farm: How To Make Your Own Candle Wicking:
To make candle wicking or coarse towelling you can plant oil seed flax and harvest the seeds for oil and the stems for fiber. Oil seed flax is shorter than fiber flax and since the seeds are harvested when ripe, the fiber tends to be coarser as well. Coarseness can be somewhat controlled by planting the plants closer together and by harvesting when the plants are 1/3rd yellow and 2/3rds green. At this stage the seeds are immature, but they will mature while the stocks are drying. If you plant fiber flax, use the tow fibers, that are removed from the longer, silkier line fibers, during fiber processing.
Yes this person seriously expects you to be so committed to using local resources that you're going to go out and plant flax just so you can harvest tow so you can process it and spin it to make wicks.
(Actually, you have to spin it and then use a lucet to make it into cord! which I do know how to do, actually, so I'll really do this, for sure, but holy shit, lady. And then you mordant it! These candles are going to be fucking gourmet. I was going to use paraffin but fuck that, I have to use beeswax I chewed myself, now.)
I mean, like, fair, now I'm probably going to do this! But how funny is that, to be the number one search result? I'm just imagining being, like. A normal person. And trying to learn how to make candle wicks, and being told to sow a pound of flaxseed over a 20x20 plot and wait 100 days, as step 1.
no subject
Date: 2019-11-12 01:23 pm (UTC)"Obviously you can enter the process at this stage with a tube of already spun linen, cotton, or hemp yarn, as well. " OBVIOUSLY
They just gloss over steps 2 through 15 of actually processing and spinning flax but EVERYONE should know how to do THAT already
how local is borax anyway, I mean can you process your own, in case of catastrophic supply chain breakdowns??????
no subject
Date: 2019-11-12 02:59 pm (UTC)But like. Oh sure! Just plant flax! LOLOL. Makes perfect sense!
Listen, I'm still gonna do that, though, and it's going to be artisanal as fuck and I will never be able to sell the resulting candles because it's hundreds of dollars in labor and also they probably won't work very well because lucet cord is thick as hell wtf.
Actually I'm going to dig out my lucet and some linen thread and see what happens, because now I really want to know. But like... all the lucet cord I've ever made has been from worsted yarn and has been super thick, and I didn't think candle wicks should be quite that thick?
no subject
Date: 2019-11-13 12:36 pm (UTC)Because it sounds like something that would be very handy to have . Step by step breakdown, fairly clear language and gives terms that are easy to do more reading on.
But yeah, for most people who just want "melt brick 'o wax and pour carefully into mold A" this is a bit... Much.