I MAKE A PRIMATIVE CANDLENUSING BEEF FAT.
A few years ago I decided to make a primative candle using beef fat. Learned some stuff, thought I'd share. Started with fat I bought. I put in a big pot with some water and rendered it down (boiled it). I let it cool and the white stuff on the top is tallow (lard). Scraped it off cleaned the goop off the bottom, remelted in my fancy homemade double boiler (soup can in water), used a piece of old t-shirt as the wick, made a sand mold, positioned the wicked and poured in the liquid tallow, removed candle from sand mold. Burned great!
Now the lessons - - -
- When tallow gets hot it becomes liquid again and run out of the sand - solution: put it in a coffee mug.
- A t-shirt wick floats when the tallow turns liquid. Solution: tie a rock to the bottom.
- Rendering fat stinks, but burning tallow has no smell. Awesome!
- If you use wick sustainers, zinc core wick and plumbers putty to hold it to the bottom of a mason jar works even better.
- Use item 4 and just pour your old grease in the mason jar. It's a lot less work and burns for HOURS just like the tallow. Or buy any crisco, lard or liquid oil on sake cheap for emergency candle making!
:)
This is so cool! I didnt know you could use old tshirts for wicks! I always wondered what you could use for a wick at home, I did not want to purchase wicks. Ill have to give this a try! I bet essential oils in the tallow would smell nice. :D
Thanks for sharing!
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