RODUCTION PROCESS of the Knitted Candles
There are essentially two types of knitted candles, Easter and funeral ones. Various shapes and forms of them are evolved through time until today. The production process involves three main steps: firstly the pure beeswax is whitened through a natural process, second comes the production of the wax-string ("shamas") and at last, this string is formed through hand-knitting to the candles you can see. The main matterials used are the wick, wax (mixture of pure bee-wax and a special parafine) and various additives (scents etc).
MATERIALS
1. BEEWAX. Special quality, pure beewax is required that is supplied by producers around Greece, mainly the Chalkidiki region. The beewax should be top quality, for an easy whitening proccess and for being knitted into shapes. If it fails to meet these criteria, then the color and texture of the candles will be inappropriate. Experienced craftsmen are able to distinguish good from bad beewax which is a difficult and trial-and-error proccess. Today, with the intensive exploitation of bees, it has became harder to find pure wax.
2. PARAFIN. Good quality paraffin has been produced lately and therefore was adopted in part because of its cost-effectivenes and its ability to makes the mixture more compact and brighter. The ratio of paraffin-beewax quantities should be balanced and lies around 50-50%. It is supposed that in that proportions the beewax does not lose its natural properties.
3. COTTON-WICK. It is used in creating the wax-cord ("shamas") and is made out of soft, bleached, slightly twisted, multicore cotton that is surround of wax of an appropriate thickness, in order to have the flexibility in knitting.
4. COLORS. Without adding any dying, the wax has two original colors, white and light brown.There are a few dyings with or without scent that give to thew white wax different colors, such as red and blue.
For the three processes of candle-making, please select from the Menu.