Cool Outdoor Candle Idea

[pamela]

http://www.wikihow.com/Make-a-Bright-Outdoor-Candle-from-Old-Wax

this is a neat outdoor candle making idea that uses old candle wax and cardboard wicks.
Heck, you could probably rig up a contraption over it and cook a little something on it.



I wonder if kerosene lantern wicks would work?
but, being able to use the cardboard would help out in an emergency situation.

[Capella]

Kerosine lantern wicks (or other cotton wicks) will work when you soak them in molten wax first.

[pamela]

oh thanks capella, I was wondering if you might have to do something to them first to get them to work.

I used to make sand candles for outside, they were so pretty and easy to make.
You took your sand and made a bowl shape depression in it. Sometimes I'd take a pencil and poke down to make little legs. Then fix your wick or wicks from a stick and let them hang down and pour your melted was gently into the depression.
You let it sit till it gets hard then lift your candle out of the sand.
It would have a neat sand coating on the outside and looked great outdoors.
Sometimes I'd embed shells or little stones around it too. Those were pretty.

[slow_dazzle]

Nice wee tip. I keep aluminium (aluminum to you guys?) food containers and re-use them for baking/roasting and I have half a dozen in my rucksack for use as disposable cooking vessels. This is another good way to re-use them and also to use up candle stubs. A simple wire platform over it could act as an improvised stove, as you have pointed out.

[Capella]

When I lit a candle today, it kind of struck me, that almost all of the candles we use today are made either from stearin or parafin, both of which are, of course, oil based products. After TSHTF, it will be only bee's wax candles, which are a lot more expensive (for obvious reasons, even if you have your own bees, they need quite a lot of time to form those wax honeycombs.

So depending on your way of preparing you should either stock up on stearin candles (I would not recommend parafin, at least not for indoor use, because the fumes are a possible cancer trigger), collect the stumps of burned down candles for remolding or, if you go for a more sustainable approach and want to be independent in the long run, learn about bees or find another source of lighting. Solar powered LED lights, maybe, but even those will fail after a few years and might be hard to renew.

In the pre-oil, pre-electric age, the major source for indoor lighting were oil lamps fused with whale blubber. Definitely not a resource that is still available on a larger scale. Other animal fats like lard or tallow were used as well, but they produce much more smell than light.

I just wanted to point out that the seemingly obvious solution of "when the electricity runs out I will use candles" will not work smoothly n a post-oil age.

[wordnerd]

There are so many things we take for granted... things that we don't understand how to replace without oil

[BlueOwl]

I suspect people got a LOT more sleep for all but the last 50-100 years than they do today.  Even if you had ready access to whale blubber and/or bees I suspect you simply couldn't afford to light the room up at 5-6pm (in a month or so it'll be dark by 5pm here) and keep the room lit until 10-11pm as so many of us do now.  People probably had about 30 watts worth of candle power (incandescent watts, that is) for an hour a night or so and then just went to bed.

[risquebznss]

If anyone has some ideas on good marketable candle products my family has a large capacity candle making operation in the US and would be open to new ideas.  They use parafin and soy wax now.

[pamela]

I'd like to see some candles made with the doomer in mind.
maybe something with really long burn time, no fragrances, and perhaps a built in striking/lighting device.
Something like that would be great for a BOB.

[rbrgs]

Whale blubber.  Huh.   Not only primitive, but also nonrenewable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candlenut

The Candlenut (Aleurites moluccana), is a flowering tree in the spurge family, Euphorbiaceae, also known as Candleberry, Indian walnut, Kemiri, Varnish tree or Kukui nut tree.

Its native range is impossible to establish precisely because of early spread by humans, and the tree is now distributed throughout the New and Old World tropics. It grows to a height of 15–25 metres (49–82 ft), with wide spreading or pendulous branches. The leaves are pale green, simple and ovate, or trilobed or rarely 5-lobed, with an acute apex, 10–20 centimetres (3.9–7.9 in) long. The nut is round, 4–6 centimetres (1.6–2.4 in) in diameter; the seed inside has a very hard seed coat and a high oil content, which allows its use as a candle (see below), hence its name.

In Ancient Hawaiʻi, the nuts, named kukui were burned to provide light. The nuts were strung in a row on a palm leaf midrib, lit one end, and burned one by one every 15 minutes or so. This led to their use as a measure of time. One could instruct someone to return home before the second nut burned out. Hawaiians also extracted the oil from the nut and burned it in a stone oil lamp called a kukui hele po (light, darkness goes) with a wick made of kapa cloth.

These folks have seeds:

http://tradewindsfruit.com/candlenut.htm

[Kushtaka]

Easiest candle ever in a pinch -

ANY type of oil (cooking oil, motor oil, lamp oil, doesn't really matter) + empty tuna can + rolled up piece of paper (any type of paper).

Quite simple. Fill the can with a quarter inch of oil. Roll up some paper to about the size of a cigarette and soak it in the oil. Place it in the can with about less than a quarter of its length over the lip of the can. Light the paper that's over the edge. Instant candle - very easy to keep going and pretty fuel efficient as well.

[Laughlvn]

...After TSHTF, it will be only bee's wax candles...

Tallow, perhaps? Still, it's probably about as expensive as beeswax, down the line.

[Heodez]

I've bought a little contraption in a sustainable fair during the Interceltic Festival recently, which is very easy to use to make an oil lamp. It's called "ecolight flower" and is marketed as a "never-ending candle". All you need is water, oil and TP/tissue.
It's a piece of plastic, with a hollow in the center and 6 "canals". (it's hard to describe so I'll try to include a picture).
Fill a bowl/pitcher/vase/glass or whatever with water, add a layer of cooking oil (no thicker than one cm). Then you roll a tiny bit of TP to make a wick (about 1 inch long), slip it into the hollow. Then drop the whole contraption on the oil. The thing floats, oil flows in the canals and imbibes the wick, then you can light it. 1 cm of oil will last you about 24 hours.
The advantage is that you can leave it on its own: when the oil has run out, water imbibes the wick and the flame dies. Another advantage, if you use transparent glass as a container, is that you don't 'lose' any light, since it will also light the sides and under the container. And obviously, you save on money : I bought 3 for 10 € and they will last me forever! (Now they sell 5 wick supports for 20€, or 15 for 40€, and they include food coloring to add to the water for nice effects).
Another good point : they're made in a center for reinsertion-through-work (prisoners learning a skill to find a job when out of jail)
(click for bigger pictures)
     
Unfortunately they're not sold on a wide scale yet. He mostly sells on markets. Now they're available online (here: http://boutique.8prod.com/epages/148955.sf/fr_FR/?ObjectPath=/Shops/148955/Categories/01) but I'm not sure they sell abroad (out of France)

[wiccawench]

Heodez that is awesome! we do a fair bit of lighting with candles and oil lamps but that is something i have not seen before!

NEAT!

[pamela]

that is so beautiful!
I wonder how difficult it might be to make one if you couldn't order one.