Office of Steam Forum for Model & Toy Steam Gas & Hot Air Engines

Some really small steam engines can be run on tea light candles, a D2 runs on 1 candle and a (new style) D4 on 2 beeswax candles. I was doing a bit of research tonight on candle "technology" and stumbled on wooden wick candles, they can be a bit more finicky than regular cotton wick candle, but I was interested in the elongated flame shape vs teardrop shape flame of a standard cotton wick. The flame shape of wooden wick reminded me of the old oil lamps with the flat wick.
  I have not yet found what specific wood type is used in commercial produced wood wick candles but they always run the grain vertical as the End grain gives better capillary action to draw the fuel up.
    I happen to have lots of balsa wood in my shop and was thinking about how if I apply the runny type super glue to end grain I have had it wick 3 inches(and more) on some of the softer grades, with this in mind I easily made up a balsa wick and fitted it in a standard tea light candle by spearing it on the little metal wick holder's after melting the wax.
  The trick of these is to put the wood wick in the melted wax and the wax soaks in, also the wood should be trimmed so only about 1/8 inch higher than the wax.

  I still think a properly sized alcohol burner is superior, but this was fun and interesting experiment to get more heat out of a single candle.

Photo of my wood wick tea light candle.

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An interesting experiment. Have you checked how much soot is produced when the wood wick burns? Already candles produce too much soot in my opinion. I really like the smell of beeswax candles. But even with very small steam engines, I also prefer alcohol burners. They also produce a little soot, but not as much.

Writes someone who is sometimes too lazy to polish.

I have not run an engine on this prototype yet, but have found beeswax burns much cleaner than paraffin candles.

Update: I have found my little wood wick tea light experiment is what candlemakers call "over wicked" I found they spend a great deal of time sizing the wick to the candle to produce a pool of wax, they are looking to not over heat there fragrances, and also get the candle to burn at an efficient rate.
  My candle produced a LOT of heat, mine is not scented other than natural but it burned beautifully for about 12 to 15 minutes, then the pool of wax actually started to boil! While this is impressive, it is NOT a good thing! It sounds very much like bacon being fryed in a pan that is to hot, and splatters molten wax everywhere making a mess and also would not be fun to get the hot wax on your skin or in eyes.
  Most commercial produced wooden wicks are .010 to .040 thick and from .250 to .750 wide, mine is .125 thick and 1.125 wide, so it's really big in the candle world, it may have been properly sized for a candle say...6 to 8 inches in diameter so as not to have a boiling wax condition.
  I doubt these are practical for our use, but if anyone wants to play around with them, Its a VERY good idea to do some extended time burn tests in a safe area before you slide one of these under a valued steam engine boiler, proceed with caution!