How to make a candle wick at home. DIY candle wick. How to make a wick of the required size

Threads. You can make a wick according to a factory recipe. In industrial conditions it is woven from cotton threads. At home, you can braid them, simply twist them or crochet a rope. It all depends on the candle in which the product will be used. If it is made of wax, then it is recommended to use thick, loose threads for the wick. There is no need to intertwine them tightly. Tight weaving can be safely used for all other types of candles. This will avoid soot during their use.

Impregnation. If you manage to make a wick from a thread, you should soak it in the solution. The most commonly used compositions are:

slaked lime (30 g), sodium nitrate (8.5 g) and water (550 ml);
ammonium chloride (1 g), sodium nitrate (1 g) and water (700 ml).

If such components are difficult to find, then you can use a simpler recipe. To do this, dissolve 20 salts and 40 g of borax in 1.5 l warm water. Then the threads are lowered into the solution and left for a quarter of an hour. Next, they need to be hung and kept for 5 days, after which they should be dipped in melted wax and dried well. Store wicks in newspaper.

Saltpeter and gasoline. If you need to make a wick for a firecracker, you will need to purchase a thin rope and soak it for several hours in kerosene or gasoline. Then it is pulled out, wrung out, dried and can be used for its intended purpose. It is worth knowing that it is not difficult to make a wick according to this recipe, but it burns out almost instantly (1 m in 6 seconds). It is better to buy saltpeter in the store, prepare a saturated solution and soak the rope in it. The burning speed of such a wick is 10 cm in 3 seconds. Poplar fluff. Few people know that you can make a wick from materials that are under your feet. To do this, you should collect poplar fluff during the season. When you need to make a wick, you should put it in a newspaper and roll it into a tube. This product can be safely used for firecrackers. A wick made using this technology burns out quickly, so you need to have time to run away safe distance.

The candles are over 2 thousand years old. The first mention of the device dates back to the 1st millennium BC. IN ancient China and Japan, wax was extracted from sumac seeds. This is a shrub that bears fruit in the 5th year of life. Plants younger age They were not suitable for creating wax, because they did not yet produce seeds.

By the beginning of our era, candles based on animal fat were invented. They dipped the wick into it, covering it layer by layer. The wick itself was made from tow, cotton, timothy or milkweed stems. You can still make a candle yourself. How? More on this later.

Making a candle wick

To make a candle at home, you should start with the wick. They buy natural cotton thread for it. A striking example of this is “floss”. This embroidery material is available in any sewing store. For a candle with a diameter of 2-7 centimeters, about 15 single threads are required. For a product with a diameter of 10 centimeters, 24 threads are taken, and for a souvenir with a width of more than 10 centimeters, 30 threads are woven.

But, the diameter of a candle is not always an indicator of the thickness of the wick. There are models that burn through only partially. Such products only partially consist of flammable materials. The core burns out, leaving an untouched outline. The calculation of the power of the wick is made taking into account the paraffin, helium, or wax part. Wax does not require tight twisting of the wick threads, but paraffin and gel samples require tight twisting.

The wicks are crocheted, braided, or simply twisted. All options are valid. In order not to waste extra time, they even use ready-made parts from household candles. To make a candle with your own hands, you can soak the threads in advance, or you can do it at the same time as pouring.

Determining the shape of the candle and installing the wick

In the matter of form, the author’s imagination plays a decisive role. Any container made of plastic, metal, or ceramic will suit it. Paraffin is poured into table cups, teapots, metal tubes, boxes, and yogurt cups. If there is a paper label, it is removed. During the process, the cellulose may catch fire.

It is most convenient to work with plastic containers. They are recommended for beginners. in the day plastic container easy to make a hole. A wick is inserted into it. WITH outside glasses of thread are tied in a knot. It will negate the flow of stearin or paraffin through the hole. The hole is made with a thick needle.

Place a toothpick, wire, or any crossbar on the top of the glass. The second end of the wick is tied to it. Thus, its position is fixed. The threads should stand straight in the middle of the container. Otherwise, the candle will burn and melt unevenly.

Candle coloring

How to make a candle color? Simple and affordable way– wax crayons for children. They are easily mixed with the lamp material, unlike gouache and watercolor. These dyes are created on a water-soluble base.

It is impossible to distribute them evenly in paraffin. Illuminating elements are required exclusively on a fat-soluble basis. Interestingly, lipsticks are one of these. Therefore, some craftsmen use old, unnecessary lip samples when making candles.

Among children's candle crayons, soft samples are ideal. Specialized stores and creative salons also sell tableted dyes. The granules are specially created for those who think how to make candles with your own hands. Tablets have a much wider range of colors and shades than wax crayons. True, store-bought supplements are more expensive.

Pouring a candle

Typically, tin cans are used to melt wax. They are washed well and flattened a little. A trench is formed, from which the paraffin then flows in a thin stream into the mold for pouring. A canned food container is convenient, but, in principle, any container except glass will do.

In addition to a container for melting paraffin shavings, you will need a saucepan. Water is poured into it and brought to a boil. A jar of paraffin is placed in the seething solution. The scraps of unnecessary candles should be approximately the same in quality.

The molten material is poured into a pre-selected mold with a wick installed. First, the bottom is filled. If you pour everything at once, a lot of wax flows out through the hole in the bottom. When pouring in layers, the “escaped” material is collected and again sent for remelting. This is the answer to the question how to make a candle at home with minimal costs.

After pouring, the candle cools down and hardens when room temperature. Placing it in the refrigerator can cause the material to harden unevenly.

If the candle comes out a little rough, place it under hot water for a few seconds. This way the contour is leveled and melted. But sometimes roughness is the author’s idea. Deciding how to make your own candle, many craftsmen deliberately choose forms with a ribbed surface.

The most convenient way is to fill it upside down. That is, the head of the candle ultimately becomes the wick tied at the bottom of the container. The top of the fill becomes the base of the product. In this case, you do not have to separately fill the recess next to the wick at the top of the bowl. It almost always forms during the process of settling and hardening of the wax.

In addition to standard ones, scented candles are also poured. In this case, odorous mixtures and ethers are added to the melted material. They are thoroughly mixed with paraffin before forming the product. Regular coffee beans, cloves, or cinnamon from your home kitchen are suitable as a flavoring. Dried slices of lemons, oranges, and limes are also placed in paraffin.

Someone is trying to acquire skills that will help them survive in a global catastrophe. Someone just found a new hobby. And someone managed to turn this hobby into a profitable business, creating real works of art. What is it about? About DIY From this article you will learn how to make a wick from threads.

Required part

If you can still achieve some variations in the material for creating a candle, then you will not be able to exclude one of its components. We are talking about the wick. We will talk about how to do it at home later. Now let’s just look at what this important thread is.

Origin of the wick

It may seem logical that the wick should be contemporary with the candle, but this is not the case. Candles appeared a little later. About fifteen centuries later. At first, wood chips were used as a wick. Later we decided to use pieces of fabric. This was in those days when candles had not yet been invented, and for lighting they used small bowls with a liquid flammable substance (mostly fat), which mercilessly smoked and smelled disgusting.

However, if you think that a wick is the simplest particle that can be made from anything, then you are deeply mistaken. It's not as simple as it might seem. In order to know how to make a wick with your own hands, you must understand how and why it burns.

Processes in the wick

For a wick to be of high quality, it must consist of several interconnected fibers. This is important so that capillary forces come into action, which raise liquid fuel to the combustion source. At the molecular level, a candle wick serves as a kind of pumping substation, which allows, among other things, to better saturate the liquid with gas. As a result, the vapor pressure increases and decreases. All these processes, naturally, take place at the microscopic level, but this does not make them any less interesting. And understanding them will help you make a high-quality wick that is most suitable for a particular product.

What can a wick be made from?

Throughout history, people have tried to make a wick with their own hands from everything that burns. Thin wood chips, pieces of fabric, woven threads and even compressed poplar fluff - this is an incomplete list of materials.

Today, the most reasonable option seems to be to use cotton thread or fiberglass. Fundamental difference The difference between these materials is that the cotton burns completely, but the fiberglass wick remains. If suddenly you have a legitimate question about who needs this and why, then perhaps you are not aware of a new fashion trend - making figured candles with a frame. For example, you bought a candle in the shape of a cute cat, and when it burned down, you find a frame in the shape of the skeleton of this very animal. Some connoisseurs are simply delighted with such ideas.

When thinking about how to make a wick for a candle, pay attention to the fact that its size and diameter must be selected in accordance with the size of the candle itself. If it is too thin, it will simply fade. And if it’s too thick, it will smoke mercilessly. In automated production these parameters were calculated long ago. But when you make a wick for candles with your own hands, most often you have to achieve the required proportion by trial and error.

Another trick is that a long wick also produces smoke. And as the fat, wax or paraffin burns, it inevitably lengthens. In the Middle Ages, this problem had to be dealt with manually. Houses always had scissors to cut off the ends of the wicks. That's what they were called - wick scissors.

Nowadays, this problem has been solved in a very original way. A candle wick (which in the vast majority of cases is a thread woven from thin fibers) began to be made using an asymmetric weaving technique. As a result, the tip bends to the side and completely burns out completely on its own.

How to make a wick at home

If your candle will be made from wax, you will need a thick wick with a loose (not tight) weave. If the starting material is paraffin or various fats, the diameter of the wick should be small, and the individual threads should be twisted quite tightly.

This is done because these substances have different viscosities. In order for the wax to successfully rise through the capillaries of the wick, fairly wide passages will be required. If the same ones are left for less liquid paraffin, then it will simply lack the necessary traction, and the candle will burn dimly, unevenly, or even go out altogether.

Required impregnation

When you make a wick, remember to impregnate it before direct use. This process is not particularly labor intensive. However, it will take time, since the soaked wick must be thoroughly dried.

Impregnation is carried out so that the wick burns better and less wax or paraffin deposits are formed.

Various solutions can be used. Here are a few options.

For 500 ml of water: 5 grams of ammonium chloride, 10 grams of borax, 5 grams and 5 grams of calcium chloride.
For 550 ml of water: 30 grams of slaked lime and 8.5 grams of sodium nitrate.
For 700 ml of water: 1 gram and 1 gram of sodium nitrate.

The wick is immersed in the solution for at least 15 minutes. And then they hang it out to dry. It is recommended to dry the workpieces for at least five days.

Among home craftsmen, a solution that requires fewer specialized chemicals is popular. And although it is somewhat inferior in quality to the mixtures described above, since we are still talking about how to make a wick at home (trying, as far as possible, not to turn the house into a branch of a chemistry room), we will consider this option.

It is done as follows: take 2 tablespoons of regular table salt (not iodized), add 4 tablespoons of borax and stir it all in one and a half liters of warm water. When the solution becomes homogeneous, you can send the wick blanks there for soaking.

For better preservation of the wicks, after complete drying, you can additionally impregnate them with molten wax. To do this, you need to dip them in pre-melted wax three to four times. After this procedure, the wicks must be dried again. However, wax impregnation is only needed if you want to prepare the material for future use. The wick will be able to perform its direct function in the candle you have made without this final touch.

Wide field of activity

Once you have already figured out how to make a wick at home, think about where you can use it. In truth, working with candles is a very exciting activity. And from a cute hobby, it may well transform into a decent source of income.

Candles come in different types. The simplest ones are household ones. Their only function is very mundane - to provide light in case of a power outage. They have a simple cylindrical shape and a boring translucent white color.

Table candles are already more attractive. Various dyes are used in their production. Their shape varies from cylindrical to twisted. Such candles may well serve as an important element in creating an atmosphere for romantic dinner.

Made with the addition of substances that have a pleasant odor. In some cases, they can also be used in aromatherapy. This way you can not only lift your mood, but also improve your health.

They are very popular nowadays and gel candles. Firstly, because they are unusual, secondly, because they are beautiful and, thirdly, because they burn absolutely without any odor. They are easy to make. All you need is a transparent container (preferably in the shape of a bowl), some colored sand, beads or decorative figurines (this depends on your imagination), a wick and a melted gel mass, with which the composition is poured.

So go for it! All in your hands.

There are several ways to make a candle wick, the simplest of which is: soak a cotton or jute cord in the same wax that you use to fill candle molds. When the wax starts to bubble or foam a lot, it’s time to remove the wick, straighten it and lower it into the water. After dipping in water, place the wick to dry on paper or other clean surface.

The second method requires that you have boric acid and salt, which you need to mix 2 to 1 in a glass of water. Our wick is soaked in this solution for 12 hours. After everything has dried, the wick can be cut into pieces of the desired length.

More complex wick compositions

5% slaked lime, 1.4% sodium nitrate (sodium nitrate) and 93.3% water;
1 gram of ammonia and 1 gram of sodium nitrate per 700 ml of water;
1% ammonia, 1% sodium nitrate, 2% boric acid, 1% calcium chloride and 95% water.

How to make a wick of the required size

If you are using a cotton backing for your wick, you will need to know how to weave it. Some compositions require denser and thinner wicks, while others, on the contrary, require thicker and looser ones.

Wax requires a thicker, looser wick, while stearin or paraffin requires a tighter, less thick wick.

Kerosene lamp - indispensable assistant on a hike for lighting when there is no flashlight or its batteries are dead. She is not afraid of either wind or frost, she will help illuminate the path at night, and provide illumination when the fire goes out. However, you need to keep in mind that this is a source of non-directional lighting, and it will not be possible to illuminate the road beyond one or two meters. If consumables finished, making a wick for a kerosene lamp is easy to do with your own hands, just like the lamp itself.

The wick for a kerosene lamp should consist only of natural fiber. This could be a lace, a cotton piece of fabric, a piece of insole with a cellulose composition, or a sock. Wool fabric is not suitable for this role.

Lace wick

To create a simple wick you will need a wire of 1 mm, a cord from natural material. If there is no lace, you can twist a piece of cotton fabric several times. You need to clamp one end of the wire with pliers and start winding it so that you get something like a spring with a diameter of 1 cm with five or six turns and a distance between them of 2 mm. The last turn should be wider than the rest; it will hold the entire spiral with the cord in a vertical position. The other end of the wire is bent with a hook. A cord is inserted into the wire, its end (5-8 mm) is clamped with the top turn. Then it is placed inside a glass jar with oil, which should soak the wick, and the hook is thrown over its edge. You can pull out the ignition cord using the holder.

In past times, kerosene lamps contained wicks made from asbestos fabric. Today it is little used, since asbestos releases when burned a large number of carcinogens. It was replaced by cotton wicks. Therefore, today it is easy to find replacements for factory wicks. The main thing is that they do not contain artificial fibers, since the fabric will spark or melt; in addition, they must be woven from several rows of threads so that the wick is well saturated with fuel and holds the fire for a long time. The weave of the fabric allows the flame to more easily rise up the microcapillaries. If you make a wick from twisted cotton fabric, it will burn faster, the kerosene will evaporate faster and will be less retained in the fibers.

The simplest, “camping” option for making a wick is from a sock. To do this, you need to twist it into a sufficient thickness so that it does not burn out immediately. The top of the wick should not form a fringe. It must be completely soaked in kerosene or oil, lowered into a regular tin can. Using an old sock as a wick you can make an oil ooze kerosene lamp with your own hands from an ordinary light bulb. To do this, you need to carefully open the copper disk at its base and remove the central part with pliers. It may not be possible to remove it entirely, then you will have to remove it in parts, breaking it with a screwdriver. The main thing is to preserve the integrity of the glass surface of the lamp. If the lamp has an internal white coating, you can remove it using salt, a tablespoon of which should be poured inside the flask and shaken. The fastening for the wick will be a disk cut from an aluminum can. You need to make a hole in the center of the disk. A narrow strip is cut from an old sock, but it should not fall apart into fibers, it can be twisted. The filter is threaded through a hole in the aluminum disk and its long end is lowered into the light bulb. You need to pour kerosene into it and wait until the wick from the sock is completely saturated with it. It should stick out about one centimeter from the flask, otherwise it will smoke. In order to be able to tighten the wick as it burns, its end is fixed with a wire twisted into a spiral. To prevent it from smoking, it is recommended to moisten it with vinegar before installation.

An alternative to a fabric wick can be a carbon one. To do this, you need to take a piece of charcoal, process it, giving it the shape of a little finger 2-3 cm long. The wood fibers should be located along the wick. After this, the workpiece must be soaked in heated paraffin to impart strength. The coal is then wrapped in metal foil, which will prevent it from burning with a large flame. One part of the wick should be left uncovered, protruding 5 mm above the foil. Next, a holder is formed from the same foil, paper clip or wire, which is wound around the coal billet. The end of the holder is bent with a hook to hang on the edge of a glass container with oil. You need to make holes in the walls of the foil wrapping the coal to allow fuel to access the wick. It is desirable that the exposed surface of the coal is flush with the fuel. Homemade lamp ready, you can light the charcoal wick.

Someone is trying to acquire skills that will help them survive in a global catastrophe. Someone just found a new hobby. And someone managed to turn this hobby into a profitable business, creating real works of art. What is it about? ABOUT self-production candles at home. From this article you will learn how to make a wick from threads.

Required part

If you can still achieve some variations in the material for creating a candle, then you will not be able to exclude one of its components. We are talking about the wick. We will talk further about how to make a wick at home. Now let’s just look at what this important thread is.

Origin of the wick

Processes in the wick

For a wick to be of high quality, it must consist of several interconnected fibers. This is important so that capillary forces come into play, which lift the liquid fuel to the combustion source. At the molecular level, a candle wick serves as a kind of pumping substation, which allows, among other things, to better saturate the liquid with gas. As a result, the vapor pressure increases and the flash point decreases. All these processes, of course, take place at the microscopic level, but this does not make them any less interesting. And understanding them will help you make a high-quality wick that is most suitable for a particular product.

What can a wick be made from?

Today, the most reasonable option seems to be to use cotton thread or fiberglass. The fundamental difference between these materials is that cotton burns completely, while the fiberglass wick remains. If suddenly you have a legitimate question about who needs this and why, then perhaps you are not aware of a new fashion trend - making shaped candles with a frame. For example, you bought a candle in the shape of a cute cat, and when it burned down, you find a frame in the shape of the skeleton of this very animal. Some connoisseurs are simply delighted with such ideas.

Another trick is that a long wick also smokes. And as the fat, wax or paraffin burns, it inevitably lengthens. In the Middle Ages, this problem had to be dealt with manually. Houses always had scissors to cut off the ends of the wicks. That's what they were called - wick scissors.

Nowadays, this problem has been solved quite in an original way. A candle wick (which in the vast majority of cases is a thread woven from thin fibers) began to be made using an asymmetric weaving technique. As a result, the tip bends to the side and completely burns out completely on its own.

How to make a wick at home

Required impregnation

When you make your own candle wick, remember to soak it before direct use. This process is not particularly labor intensive. However, it will take time, since the soaked wick must be thoroughly dried.

Impregnation is carried out so that the wick burns better and less wax or paraffin deposits are formed.

Various solutions can be used. Here are a few options.

For 500 ml of water: 5 grams of ammonium chloride, 10 grams of borax, 5 grams of sodium nitrate and 5 grams of calcium chloride.
For 550 ml of water: 30 grams of slaked lime and 8.5 grams of sodium nitrate.
For 700 ml of water: 1 gram of ammonium chloride and 1 gram of sodium nitrate.

The wick is immersed in the solution for at least 15 minutes. And then they hang it out to dry. It is recommended to dry the workpieces for at least five days.

Wide field of activity

Once you have already figured out how to make a wick at home, think about where you can use it. To tell the truth, working with candles is a very exciting activity. And from a cute hobby, it may well transform into a decent source of income.

There are candles different types. The simplest ones are household ones. Their only function is very mundane - to provide light in case of a power outage. They have a simple cylindrical shape and a boring translucent white color.

Scented candles are made with the addition of substances that have a pleasant smell. In some cases, they can also be used in aromatherapy. This way you can not only lift your mood, but also improve your health.

Gel candles are also very popular these days. Firstly, because they are unusual, secondly, because they are beautiful and, thirdly, because they burn absolutely without any odor. They are easy to make. All you need is a transparent container (preferably in the shape of a bowl), some colored sand, beads or decorative figurines (this depends on your imagination), a wick and a melted gel mass, which is used to fill the composition.

So go for it! All in your hands.

Despite the abundance of electrical appliances, candles are still popular, and if you want to make a candle with your own hands, then you need to know how to make a candle wick. Candles give special mood During the holidays, they can create a special atmosphere during a romantic dinner, and candles can also come in handy during a power outage, from which no one is immune. You can buy a candle in a store, or you can try to make it yourself - of any shape and size, with different decorative elements or flavored. But before you start making a candle, you need to make a wick.

The wick is a kind of capillary through which the molten candle mass enters the combustion zone. Each type of candle has its own wick. The texture and thickness of the wick may depend on the thickness of the candle, its material, coloring, its filling with decorative particles and much more. For example, there are candles in which only the middle burns out, while the walls remain intact, and for them their own types of wicks are used.

For each candle, the wick is selected by trial and error, and sometimes you need to try several options. It should be remembered that a wick that is too thin will constantly go out, and a thick wick will smoke and the candle will melt too much.

Usually the wick is woven from cotton threads. They can be twisted, braided and even crocheted; the optimal type of weaving is selected based on the characteristics of the candle. If the candle is made of wax, then thick, loose threads are used as the wick and they are not woven tightly, but for other candles, on the contrary, thin threads and tight weaving are used to avoid soot. This is due to the viscosity of the molten candle mass: more viscous wax requires wide capillaries, and lighter paraffin, stearin and various fats need thinner capillaries, otherwise, due to an excess of flammable material, the candle will become very smoky.

Typically, wicks are impregnated with solutions containing sodium nitrate, namely:

30 gr. slaked lime, 8.5 g. sodium nitrate and 550 ml. water;
5 gr. ammonium chloride, 5 g. sodium nitrate, 10 g. borax and 5 gr. calcium chloride is dissolved in 500 ml of water.
1 gr. ammonium chloride, 1 g. sodium nitrate and 700 ml of water;

Do homemade wicks and as follows: dissolve 2 tablespoons of table salt and 4 tablespoons of borax in one and a half liters of warm water and dip a cotton thread or twine into the solution required thickness for 15 minutes. The soaked wick is hung and kept for 5 days to dry completely. Then a paperclip is attached to the wick and dipped into melted wax 3-4 times until full coverage. After this, the wick is also hung until completely dry. Prepared wicks should be stored wrapped in newspaper.

If you want to blow something up without getting injured, you need to ensure that the pyrotechnic charge can detonate safely. The most common way to do this is to make a wick that can be lit at a safe distance. Below you will see a couple of methods for making a wick.

How to make a kickford cord

For insulating wires, empty paste from an ordinary pen or a soda straw is perfect. Fill the shell with crushed (be careful, they may detonate while crushing) match heads. If you want, you can replace them with gunpowder or another similar mixture. If you light such a cord, the wind will not extinguish it, but if it is well insulated, you can use it under water. The more you compress the filling, the longer the fuse will burn.

In order to optimize the process, if you use match heads, the sulfur may not be scraped off, but the match heads may be broken off immediately, since there is no more than 10 sulfur on one match, and the main ingredients are Berthollet salt and phosphorus (KSIOZ). Lay them out in a row, then wrap it all with tape. However, some craftsmen manage to remove wax with one graceful movement of their fingers.

How to make a jute wick

An ordinary jute rope will do, which must first be soaked in potassium or sodium nitrate dissolved in water.

How to make a stopin

For this type of wick, the same jute rope is suitable, or better yet, if you take an old cotton rope. Repeat the already familiar procedure of soaking in a solution of potassium or sodium nitrate and dry thoroughly. Then mix organic glue and gunpowder pulp to a viscous, thick consistency. Stopin is a cotton rope that is pulled through this mixture and soaked in saltpeter.

Hunting matches - wick

Why isn't this a wick? One match can burn for about 20 seconds without going out even in bad weather. Just make sure that the charge does not detonate before the required time due to sparks flying in all directions.

Pyrotechnics, both large and small, have long been an integral part of almost any holiday. Moreover, we are talking not only about fireworks, but also about sparklers, firecrackers and firecrackers.

The key to safety when using pyrotechnics is, first of all, strict adherence to the operating instructions. However, there are situations when it is necessary to improvise in order for the holiday to really be a success. For example, a purchased firecracker has a too short wick, and it is dangerous to use, but you really want to. Then there is a solution: make a wick for firecrackers with your own hands.

There are several ways to do this. The difference between them lies mainly in the choice of flammable substance.

Therefore, each method has its own characteristics:

You can use insulation from wires or a pen refill that has run out of ink as a cord. We fill the wire with sulfur removed from match heads and crushed into powder. Tamp the filling thoroughly with a needle or toothpick. Be careful as friction may cause accidental fire. The denser the sulfur is packed, the longer the wick will burn.
To avoid crushing the sulfur heads, you can simply break them off carefully and place them in a row on tape. Then roll the tape into a tube so that the sulfur is inside. The more heads, the longer the cord.
An ordinary thin rope can be soaked in a solution of saltpeter, which can be purchased at a gardening store (this good fertilizer). The saltpeter will need to be dissolved in water until well saturated, and then the cord will need to be lowered there for several hours.
A flammable composition can be made from potassium permanganate and super glue. These two components must be combined and mixed well. At first, the mixture will turn out to be liquid, but over time it will thicken to the state of plasticine. Roll the resulting substance into a thin sausage. Here's the wick for you.
In summer, poplar fluff is suitable for making wicks. Collect it, remember it well and wrap it in a paper tube.

How to make a firecracker without a wick

You can make not only the wick yourself, but also the firecracker itself. There can be several filling options: sulfur from matches, saltpeter mixtures, and much more. If you understand chemistry, you can easily select the appropriate composition. The body is also made from scrap materials. It is possible to make it from cardboard, foil, small plastic jars... It all depends on what effect you are hoping for.

Making firecrackers without a wick is difficult, but possible. True, it’s not very clear why the wick is stopping you... And there are much more ways to do it as it should be than the other way around. But there are still such options.

Our faithful friends, matches, will come to our aid. We clean the sulfur from them; usually one whole box is enough. Then we carefully grind it into powder and pour it onto a piece of foil approximately 10x10 cm in size. Next, we cut out the side part of the box - phosphorus cherry. We clear it of any remaining paper. Cut into two or three parts and add to sulfur powder. We wrap the foil to create a small square with a flammable core inside. Ready! To make a firecracker detonate, you just need to hit it with a hammer.

Another way is to use napkins, electrical tape, caps and small pebbles to make. First you will need to delaminate the napkin. Cut the resulting thin part into eight equal squares. Grind the contents of the pistons in the center of a cut-out piece of napkin, and place pebbles on top. Wrap the resulting mixture so that the shape of the firecracker resembles a small onion. To seal, wrap the tail of the onion with electrical tape. To detonate, throw your invention against a wall or forcefully throw it onto the asphalt.

And yet, we will include in our list of recipes one on how to make a firecracker with a wick and gunpowder. Take a piece of thick cardboard and roll it into a cylinder. Choose the parameters of the piece yourself; it will serve as a body for the future firecracker; accordingly, it should not be very large.

On one side we make a plug. It can be made from plasticine or the same cardboard. If you prefer the second option, coat it well with glue so that right moment the plug remained in place. Next we make gunpowder. It can be made from potassium nitrate, coal and sulfur. The following proportions must be observed: six parts of saltpeter, one part of coal and the same amount of sulfur. Mix all ingredients thoroughly. The quantity depends on the size of the case. We pour our gunpowder inside the case and begin making the wick. You can use any method, but we still recommend the option with a pen rod and sulfur from matches.

The length of the wick should be such that you have time to move to a safe distance. We are preparing a plug for the other side of the case. We insert it and make a hole in it that matches the diameter of the wick. If it turns out to be larger, we additionally wrap the wick with paper so that it is tightly secured in the firecracker cap and the structure itself is airtight. The firecracker is ready.

Where can I buy a firecracker wick?

If you are not eager to make firecrackers or its components yourself, then you have a direct route to a pyrotechnics store. There, experienced sellers will tell you which wick would be better suited for your product. Typically, wicks and strings (for professional fireworks) are sold in skeins, meaning either mass use for big celebrations, or cut off as much as you need.

In order not to make a mistake with the choice of wick, decide for yourself how many firecrackers will be used, and how far you will have time to move away from the moment of arson. If in doubt, it is better to ask a professional for advice. Let him give you comprehensive recommendations on exactly how many centimeters of wick you need to purchase. If you don’t want to leave home in search of the right product, online stores also have plenty to choose from. There is always a manager or administrator at your service who will give you equally detailed information about quantity, quality and cost.