Mar 18, 2011

Tallow Candles

I've been wanting to try making these to see if they really work.  We have a lot more tallow than wax at our place, as we raise beef cattle and my bees died out last year.  So...
We made a wick from cotton string, boric acid and sea salt.
Those white things are boric acid that isn't dissolved yet.
Then I rendered the tallow.
After drying the wick, we braided it as tight as we could.

Then we tried making a hand dipped candle.  I only rendered enough tallow for about two candles.  We dipped and dipped and it seemed to take forever.  So, being the patient person I am, decided not to make a hand dipped candle.  I have since learned that it does take time and you're better off doing a large batch at one time.
We ended up making a jar candle.

Looks rather primitive, but it worked.

We put some rain scented fragrance oil in the tallow to help it smell more "pleasing".  I'm happy with the way it turned out.  It burns well, the oil doesn't put the flame out, it doesn't have much of a scent.  So now we know-tallow works for candles.

5 comments:

Cheryl said...

We just took our steer in this morning to be butchered. We asked him to save all the fat and tallow for us. I want to use it for soap. Not sure how much we will get from one Jersey, almost two years old.

I will have to keep this mind. Have a great day.

~Cheryl

Gentleliving7 said...

I am so glad you did this!! I have the tallow in the freezer that I rendered a couple of months ago. I still need to make the candles. You have inspired me and reminded me to try it. This is so exciting. Thank you so much for sharing this.
Blessings to you,
Cammy
Hopefulheart77

Carol said...

Interesting Rhonda. Thanks for posting! Hmmm.... I have rendered tallow in m freezer reserved for soap making but maybe I can try candles. We get our tallow from a beef farm not far from us.. he told me he uses it as a fire starter. It never dawned on me that one could make candles from it.

Gramma Roxanne said...

just seeing if this will accept my comment

Gramma Roxanne said...

okay it did finally after rejecting it a number of times~~
hello and thank-you for the note I received it Tuesday. Fun fun
my question for you is hom much boric acid and how much salt did you use to soak the string in and was it ordinary string or hemp string? I want to make more candles and can not afford the wick right now love and God's many blessings and love your blog Roxanne

Mar 18, 2011

Tallow Candles

I've been wanting to try making these to see if they really work.  We have a lot more tallow than wax at our place, as we raise beef cattle and my bees died out last year.  So...
We made a wick from cotton string, boric acid and sea salt.
Those white things are boric acid that isn't dissolved yet.
Then I rendered the tallow.
After drying the wick, we braided it as tight as we could.

Then we tried making a hand dipped candle.  I only rendered enough tallow for about two candles.  We dipped and dipped and it seemed to take forever.  So, being the patient person I am, decided not to make a hand dipped candle.  I have since learned that it does take time and you're better off doing a large batch at one time.
We ended up making a jar candle.

Looks rather primitive, but it worked.

We put some rain scented fragrance oil in the tallow to help it smell more "pleasing".  I'm happy with the way it turned out.  It burns well, the oil doesn't put the flame out, it doesn't have much of a scent.  So now we know-tallow works for candles.

5 comments:

Cheryl said...

We just took our steer in this morning to be butchered. We asked him to save all the fat and tallow for us. I want to use it for soap. Not sure how much we will get from one Jersey, almost two years old.

I will have to keep this mind. Have a great day.

~Cheryl

Gentleliving7 said...

I am so glad you did this!! I have the tallow in the freezer that I rendered a couple of months ago. I still need to make the candles. You have inspired me and reminded me to try it. This is so exciting. Thank you so much for sharing this.
Blessings to you,
Cammy
Hopefulheart77

Carol said...

Interesting Rhonda. Thanks for posting! Hmmm.... I have rendered tallow in m freezer reserved for soap making but maybe I can try candles. We get our tallow from a beef farm not far from us.. he told me he uses it as a fire starter. It never dawned on me that one could make candles from it.

Gramma Roxanne said...

just seeing if this will accept my comment

Gramma Roxanne said...

okay it did finally after rejecting it a number of times~~
hello and thank-you for the note I received it Tuesday. Fun fun
my question for you is hom much boric acid and how much salt did you use to soak the string in and was it ordinary string or hemp string? I want to make more candles and can not afford the wick right now love and God's many blessings and love your blog Roxanne