Forged a little candle holder

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Today I fired up the forge to attempt my first ‘in a jar candle holder’. It came out alright, though I appreciate that I have a lot of technique to figure out.

After I was done forging I needed to coat the candle holder. My mother-in-law keeps bees and gave me some wax which is often used to coat metal. However, I tried pure wax before and, for the most part, it just made a mess of my anvil.

I heard about a mix of bees wax, turpentine, and linseed oil (in equal parts). It’s a recipe that’s been around for 150+ years to make metal more rust resistant (except they used turpentine and I didn’t have any, and white spirits is basically the same thing), so thought I’d give it a go…

As I was pouring the white spirits into the pan a little bit of it spilled over the edge and ignited and then the whole contents of the pan caught fire and sent a pleasing (if not worrying!) fireball upwards. Thankfully nothing damaged (except pride for letting it happen in front of the wife!) and once my mixture was ready to pour into the tin I had ready I was happy…. Only to find my tin wasn’t exactly water tight.

So lessons of the day?

Don’t let really flammable things catch light because they will prove just how flammable they are. And don’t be fooled into thinking all tins are equal.

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