Hot wax, rope, pain, blow job

In your dreams, FNH. In your dreams.

After the preparations, I started making the candle itself. First of all, I applied some silicon spray inside the mould in the hope it would ease separation when finished, which it did. Then the melting of the tealights began; for this I used a little saucepan we hardly use anymore.
The candle wax (it was actually paraffin) melted quite easily. When the first batch of tealights were liquid, the mess began for good. I cut off a piece of cotton rope, to be used as wick, and put it in the molten paraffin, in order for it to suck up as much paraffin as possible. This to prevent the wick from burning up before the wax melts in the final product, which would make the candle unusable. Having a paraffinated wick also helps keeping the piece of rope straight, which makes for easier handling. However, to get a straight wick, it has to dry in straight form; which means gripping it with both hands and pulling it straight. One side was cold and clean (I was smart enough not to drop the entire length in the paraffin), the other hot and messy. This was the most painful stage in the entire candle making process.

When the wick had dried, I poured some wax in the mould and it ran right out of it, through the openings between mould and pot. However, when this first layer solidified, the mould was closed. Before this layer was entirely solid, I put in the wick.
Then the routine began: adding some coins, adding some more wax, waiting until the wax solidified, adding another layer of coins, and so on. I did enverything to get the wax cooled down as quickly as possible: I put the coins in the fridge, I added water in the pot so that the mould was surrounded by water, I added ice cubes to the water, and of course I blowed on the wax to cool it down.
The level of wax gradually increased, until it reached the edge of the surrounding pot, at which point I couldn't add more water to cool it down. This lack of cooling was very apparent: subsequent layers set remarkably slower.



I finally had enough of it (I had also gone slightly over budget, those large denomination coins add up faster than you'd think) and concluded with a bunch of 1 and 2 cent coins and the remainder of the wax. I then put the entire pot in the cellar where it could cool down completely.



Cleaning up was surprisingly easy: I rinsed the melting pot with cold water until it was entirely cooled. Since wax and paraffin have a larger density (and thus smaller volume) when in solid form than in liquid form, the solidified paraffin remains could be taken out from the pot in one piece.

The next day, I removed the candle from its mould, cut off the brittle edges at the top and the bottom, trimmed the wick to size, and wrapped it in as a gift.



Part of the message is a joke on the recepient's function with the W3C, as they are notorious for filling their specifications with lots of requirement level phrases.