Freezing candles

[aeb218]

Hey

Does anybody know why freezing candles prevents them from dripping?

My mother always puts her new tapers in the freezer before putting them in candlesticks & the candles do not drip when burned. This effect will last for weeks so it’s not just that the candle has to be cold for it to work.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
Amy

[screech-owl]

Hey back, and welcome!

WAG - freezing contracts and sets the wax?

It also helps if you keep the candles out of a draft. In a feat of brilliant design, there is a five-bladed fan as well as the air-conditioning duct right over my dining room table. Cools off the people and the food, and the candles drip anyway.

Not so much for non-drippiness, I keep my candles in the freezer so I know where they are when I need them (power outages and such). Really annoying, however, when all you have in the freezer is ice cubes and candles.

"Honey, what’s for dinner?
“Fried green and purple tapers with shredded wick and a lovely orange votive sauce on the side, and yellow musk pillars for dessert.”

[Doctor_Jackson]

I found lots of candle information at this site:
http://www.genwax.com/candle_tips/___0___FAQmain.htm#b1

A couple of the relevant FAQs were:

Q: Will candles burn longer if you store them in the freezer?

A: Although it is true that a candle may burn longer if you store it in the freezer, it will not burn as well. Wax that is cold will take a little longer to melt. As a result, less molten wax is available for consumption in the flame. This causes a smaller, dimmer flame that barely generates enough heat to maintain the burning process. It is possible that the candle will start consuming the wick as fuel and give off excess smoke. Eventually the candle will warm up to room temperature and proceed to burn in a more normal manner.

The lack of molten wax available and lower burn temprature would seem to indicate less drip, but only until the candle warms up. There is no indication here, or the other 30 or so candle sites I visited, that freezing has any long term effect on the wax. In fact, storing candles in the freezer seems to be a bad thing.

Other sites recommended refrigerating a candle before use for a longer, more even burn. This makes sense because the wax is cooler and more uniformly firm due to contraction, but one would expect a dimmer, cooler flame as explained above. None of the sites indicated that refrigeration or freezing would eliminate wax drip.

Perhaps the candles your Mom buys are really dripless to begin with?

[Milton_De_La_Warre]

Damn! I meant to ask this question as I’d heard that once-frozen candles don’t drip. I’ve tried it and don’t really notice that there is any more or less “drippiness”, but that’s something that’s difficult to define. This calls for an SD science board experiment.