Vector 750 Watt Power Inverter Bedienungsanleitung PDF herunterladen (Seite 16)

I. INTRODUCTION

As I’ve mentioned before, I regularly receive a variety

of questions and requests from people who hear about

this publication. The ones from the technical community

are generally well reasoned. Some are obnoxious (“I’m

a student at XYZ College and have a paper due

tomorrow on vacuum gauges, please send me all the

information you have...”). Then there are the ones from

confused English majors who confuse vacuum bell jars

with something written by Sylvia Plath and then accuse

me of plagiarism. And then there was the “farmer” who

wanted to know how to freeze dry 2 lbs. of dirt (on

second thought, maybe he was trying to preserve

anthrax spores?).

A while ago I got an email message from Deb

Puerini, a dedicated gel candle maker who lives in

Rhode Island. She wrote:

“I just stumbled upon your site from a Google

search. I am a gel candle maker and recently heard about

making gel candles bubble-free by (and I quote): ‘...that

her Dad, an engineer, had built her some type of

contraption that has a vacuum pump or something to

cause the bubbles be under a vacuum pressure, and

when they were poured they had no bubbles. I think he

should market the contraption instead of selling the

candles.’

“Do you have a clue as to what this “contraption”

might be? I remember in high school we had a huge

glass jar (like the 5 gal water bottles) and the teacher put

marsmallows in it and closed the top. It had a vacuum

pump or something and the marshmallows got huge. Do

you know what I’m talking about? Well if you could let

me know if a thing like that could be made, I would be

ever grateful if you could build such a thing to help us

poor gel candlemakers who are sick of bubbles in

certain candles!”

From this it was obvious that she was describing a

vacuum deairing process but what the heck is a gel

candle? As I quickly found out, gel candles, rather than

using conventional paraffin wax, use a clear, proprietary

mix of mineral oil and a polymer to which are added

dyes and scents.

II. GEL CANDLE BASICS

After a bit of correspondence with Deb I learned that

these candles are made by melting the gel, mixing in the

various additives and then pouring the gel into a

container with, at the minimum, a wick. Because of the

number of degrees of freedom that one has with this

clear gel, the candle maker will usually add a variety of

other items. The photo of Figure 1 shows an ornate gel

candle that has been made to look like a fish bowl,

complete with glass fish. Since the candle maker inserts

objects into the gel, the clarity of the gel is very

important in many pieces and bubbles are something

that the candle maker tries to avoid. The traditional way

of doing this is to keep the gel hot for an extended

period, permitting at least some of the bubbles to rise to

the surface and break. Small bubbles and bubbles that

have adhered to the immersed objects are the hardest to

remove.

One of the largest manufacturers of this gel material

is Pennzoil’s Penreco Division (4401 Park Ave.,

Dickenson, TX 77539). Their gel candle product is

called Versagel™ C. The product bulletin describes the

generic candle making process as follows: 1) melting

the raw gel at a temperature of about 100 °C and mixing

in the additives, 2) pouring at about 90 °C and 3) letting

the candle set in an oven at about 65 °C to remove

bubbles. Hope (accompanied by a bit of cursing) is an

important part of the process.

the Bell Jar, Vol. 10, No. 3/4, Summer/Fall 2001

Figure 1 - Gel Candle (Fishbowl). Photo courtesy of

Deb Puerini, used with permission.

Bubbles and Gel Candles

A project inspired by gel candle maker Deb Puerini

Steve Hansen

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