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Candle making
All Containers›Shop by use case›Candle making›Getting started›Where the wax comes fromShop all candles →
Getting started

Where the wax comes from

By Dwight Davis, Founder

Updated

On this page5

The first material decision, and the one where a product number matters more than a material name.

Buy by product number

"Soy wax" is a category. Two container soy waxes from different manufacturers behave differently enough to need separate testing.

So the thing you record and reorder is the manufacturer's product number, not the type. A formula sheet that says "soy wax" is not reproducible.

The supply chains

Candle supply houses, which sell in bags and small cases and carry wax, wicks and fragrance together. The right starting point.

Distributors, at pallet quantities, once you know exactly what you want.

Beeswax is different again: it comes from beekeepers and renderers, varies by season and hive, and is the one wax where a local material story is available.

What to ask for

The technical data sheet: melt point, recommended pour temperature, fragrance addition temperature, maximum fragrance load, cure time.

Those five numbers are your process. A supplier who cannot provide them is selling wax rather than supporting a product.

And the lot number, written on the bag the day it arrives.

Buying quantity

Wax keeps, so the volume discount is real and low risk, as long as you have somewhere cool to store it.

The catch is reformulation. A supplier changing the formulation of a product number, or a natural wax varying between lots, invalidates your testing, and a pallet of a wax that no longer behaves like the one you tested is an expensive way to learn that.

Which is why a bag from the new lot gets a confirmation burn before the pallet gets used.

References

No published source. This page is written from practice rather than from published guidance. No extension service or agency publishes on this question for candles, so nothing here is cited, and it should be weighed as experience and not as a standard.
Written from the federal regulation, the CPSC material and the published scope of the ASTM candle standards. The standards themselves are copyrighted documents that must be bought; what is described here is their scope and requirements as published, not their text. Your own burn testing against your own vessel and wick is what establishes whether a candle you made is safe.