Candle Care

Below are some tips and tricks to take care of your Modern Forestry candle.

Burn Time and Tunneling

When a candle is burning, it is a delicate balance of solid, liquid, and gas. The flame melts the solid wax and oil mixture turning it into a liquid. As the liquid melts it releases the oil into the air. As the oil and wax get closer to the wick, it releases into flame and the flame repeats the cycle.

A small minority of our candles will not properly burn and the flame doesn't get hot enough to melt the wax around the edge. This forms a tunnel and an effect we call "tunneling"

A very sad state indeed!

Sometimes the cause of tunneling is too much oil in the candle for it to burn (especially in some of our earlier recipes of Coffeehouse). In most cases tunneling has to do with how long you burn the candle. If you burn your candle for too short of time (less than 45 minutes), it will begin to create layers of unmelted wax that will start to affect the constitution of our candles and cause tunneling. If you burn your candle too long it will superheat the sides of the glass and cause the jar to become black.

To prevent tunneling, always let your candle melt the wax all the way around the jar.

To fix a candle that has already tunneled, you can scoop out the layers of wax around the wick to give your wick a chance. Alternatively you can use tinfoil to hold in the heat and melt the surrounding wax.