My Newest Fun Toy...

So, yesterday my Mom came over and we made "Candles". (all directions will follow these pictures)

This is a fire starter. Here it is in the egg carton before cutting them out.

Here is a candle in a #10 can. I am putting the lids on them later when they are TOTALLY cooled off.

These are in tuna cans. See the little "wicks" of wood? I highly recommend this instead of an actual wick.

Here is our creation burning, because we are nerds and have to try them right away to see how much heat, smoke and light they give off.

So, we wanted to try these out instead of buddy burners (in case you don't know, buddy burners are tightly coiled cardboard in a tuna can with wax poured over and hardened, you use it for cooking and heat) to see if they solved a few problems. Buddy burners are awesome emergency "candles" and super cheap to make...but they smoke like crazy, they burn out after a couple hours and they only put out limited heat.

These are Sawdust Candles.

You take 6 Cups of sawdust (or about 3/4 of an ice cream pail full of sawdust) and mix it like rice crispy squares with melted wax. The "recipe" we used said about 11/2 cups but we were not happy with how coated the sawdust was so we used about 4 Cups of wax to 6 Cups of Sawdust. Ours was really well cut so it soaked up the wax really well. (you may have to experiment with yours)

Next you pack the wax coated sawdust in your container. (we used cardboard egg cartons - do not use Styrofoam, you burn these whole, tuna cans, and #10 cans. I am sure you can use any size cans but this is what I have been saving) Pack it well. In a #10 can we fit about 3-4 batches in each one (so that is about 18 - 24 cups of wax coated sawdust)

When you are done, pop in a stick like wick. We found this aids in lighting...but is cheap because you don't need to buy wicking! (that's me...cheap, cheap, cheap!)

Here are a few things we learned.

1. When lighting, tilt to the side. The wax needs to be burnt off before it will light and this helps burn it off.
2. When you are done, cover with something and it will go out. (we used a pot lid) DO NOT BLOW out. There is a pretty massive flame going on and it will not blow out.
3. These are totally house friendly. They burn a really clean flame and there was absolutely no smoke off of it. The only smoke we had from ours was when we put it out.
4. The heat these put out is amazing, put it on a trivet or plate or something that is not going to burn or melt. (in my picture you can see I used a ceramic plate, that worked great)
5. These burn forever. We had ours lit for about 30 min and we have a rim around the top that is not even burnt. So I am guessing that the little eggies will burn about 20 min, the tunas about 4-6 hours, the #10's about 8-12 hours...just a guess, but I think close to accurate.

These were super fun and I am so glad I made them. We have lots of heat for any emergency we have, and it only cost us the price of wax (and Mom said she bought it 4 huge slabs of it for $15 a million years ago...I am on a mission to find some cheap wax though)
Cheers