What causes candles to smoke? A candle smokes when the
wick's too large. The candle provides insufficient fuel to the too-thick
string, and gives off black smoke, while burning. Choose the optimum size wicks
for your candles, corresponding to the
width of your candles, to best prevent these errors.
What if labelled candle making thread's not available? Buy short lengths of
different size candle wicks, and do the following: make a wide candle with each
thickness, (so it burns down the middle). The candle doesn't have to be
particularly tall. Burn it for several hours; extinguish it; measure the width of
the burnt-out hole, and label the wick. This takes time and patience, but keeps the
guesswork out of your future candle making efforts.
During the testing process, too-small cotton cores might drown in the liquid wax.
That's OK. By this stage, pronounced pools will have formed, with measurable
diameters.