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Akron Zoo’s $500,000 Conservation Carousel opens to public Saturday
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Orphans in Fondwa
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Busing, sports fees and class size on table if Copley-Fairlawn schools levy fails
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Links to Browns coverage: July 30, 2010
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Key MAC Games Of 2010 Season
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LeBron still has at least one fan in Cleveland
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10 Hurdles Standing Between Ohio State and Another National Championship
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Important Dates for Upcoming High School Football Season
All Da King's Men:
Arizona Immigration Law Blocked, Drug Cartels Rejoice
Blog of Mass Destruction:
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Akron Law Café:
Key Portions of Arizona Immigration Law Struck Down by Federal Court
Car Chase:
Sunday – or Anyday Drives
Let's Talk Real Estate:
Brangelina to Buy in Santorini?
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HRLite House:
From the White House – New Federal Approach to Hiring
By Mary Beth Breckenridge
Beacon Journal staff writer
POSTED: 11:36 a.m. EDT, Oct 09, 2009
MEDINA: Making fine candles is a delicate balance of science and art.
The right wax has to be combined with the proper wick for the best burn. Colors have to match exactly from batch to batch. Even the fragrance and hue of a candle need to be perfectly paired to meet consumers' expectations.
Those kinds of details are the business of Medina's 140-year-old A.I. Root Co.
Root has been in business since 1869 and early on made its mark as a manufacturer of beekeeping equipment. But its founder, Amos Ives Root, set the stage for the company's current focus by rolling sheets of beeswax from his hives around wicks to create altar candles, which are still Root's flagship product.
Today, Root candles light churches and homes across the United States and beyond. The company added decorative candles in the 1960s and now produces between 2,000 and 2,200 decorative products in Medina and almost 2,000 liturgical products here and in San Antonio, said its current president, Brad Root. It employs 150 people in Medina, 15 in San Antonio and 10 sales representatives across the country who handle liturgical-candle sales.
It's a long way from the company's beginnings.
Founder A.I. Root originally repaired and made jewelry in a store on the Medina square. As Brad Root, his great-great grandson, relates the story, honeybees swarmed the store window one day in 1869, and A.I. had a worker capture the colony in a box.
His wife was not pleased. ''You paid a day's wage for a box of bugs,'' she supposedly told him.
But the acquisition sparked in A.I. a fascination with beekeeping. He saw a business opportunity in finding a better way to harvest their honey, and he went on to standardize beekeeping equipment. He wrote a book, established a magazine for beekeepers and became known around the world as ''the bee man.''
Although A.I.'s company has since gotten out of beekeeping, it continues to publish the monthly Bee Culture magazine and keeps a few hives for the edification of the magazine's editor, Kim Flottum. Flottum even advises the keeper of the White House's hive and helped figure out a way to keep the bees in check so they wouldn't annoy the participants in this year's Easter Egg Roll.
Beeswax ingredient
Today, the Root Co.'s focus is primarily on candles, but beeswax — most of it from Iowa's Sioux Honey — remains an important ingredient. It's always been used in Root's liturgical candles, and now it's blended with other natural waxes in a new line of home fragrance products called Legacy by Root. Beeswax, Brad Root explained, is desirable because it burns slower than other waxes. And in combination with other soy- and vegetable-based waxes, he said, it does a better job of emitting fragrances.
''We're trying to find a niche in the market that wants top-quality, American-made products'' made of renewable materials, he said.
At Root Candles' headquarters complex just west of Medina's town center, the company uses a variety of methods to produce its products. Some of the candles are made by pouring melted wax into tempered-glass jars. Some are made by dipping wicks repeatedly into hot wax in a computer-controlled version of the method used by early Americans. Some candles are formed in molds. Still others are made by compressing wax pellets that resemble snow.
The company's signature Grecian pillar candle, for example, starts as melted wax in a metal mold. A worker stirs the wax briskly to prevent air bubbles from forming and tops off the wax as it cools and shrinks.
When it hardens, the candle is unmolded and the wax on the end trimmed to level the candle's base. A drill press bores a hole through the candle to allow a waxed wick to be inserted, and finally the candle is pushed through hot dies to form its distinctive ridged coating.
A more unusual process involves compressing paraffin pellets under pressure.
Paraffin is sprayed onto the cold surfaces of giant, spinning drums, and then knives scrape off the hardened wax coating to form pellets that resemble snowflakes. Pistons press the pellets into molds or containers, and in some cases the rough candles are then dipped into liquid wax to form a smooth coating.
Brad Root explained the process makes candles particularly bend-resistant, a plus for tall altar candles that might be in use for weeks or more.
The pellet process is used to make Root's Timberline pillar candles, a decorative product that was the happy result of a mistake. The pellets give the candles a rough finish that couldn't be successfully smoothed, Brad Root said, but the company decided it liked the look and ended up with a marketable product.
The pellets are compressed and extruded into long cylinders that are cut to length to make the Timberline pillars. At the end of the process, a worker dips each end of the candle into a shallow pool of melted wax and gives the candle a quick twist, creating a wax design that resembles a tree.
Attention to detail
That kind of handwork isn't unusual in Root's manufacturing process. Workers can be seen inserting wicks by hand, trimming and polishing candle tops and even using what look like makeup brushes to dust candles with glitter for a retailer's special Christmas order.
The company produces decorative candles in about three fragrances during each of two daily shifts, Brad Root said. Each fragrance is thoughtfully paired with its own color to try to match consumers' perceptions, a process that can make or break a particular candle's popularity.
The company recently tweaked its pumpkin color, ''and we have people that either love it or they hate it,'' Brad Root said.
That kind of attention to detail even extends to the wicks, he said. A room at the factory is devoted to braiding either cotton fiber or a blend of cotton and rayon into various configurations, each designed for a specific purpose. He believes his company is the only candle maker that braids its own wicks, and he said significant testing goes into creating the right wick for a particular candle.
That's because manufacturing is only part of the production process.
Many sample candles are created and tested until the best combination of wick and wax is determined for each type of candle, Brad Root said. Colors are scrutinized by computer to make sure all the batches match precisely — a particular challenge because candle scraps are reused, and the effect of their dyes varies from batch to batch. As the candles are produced, samples from each batch are cut open and studied or burned under controlled conditions to measure such aspects as how long the candle burns, how big a flame it produces, how much wax drips and how much soot is emitted.
It's the scientific part of a business that has beauty as its goal. And creating that beauty is an art.
Mary Beth Breckenridge can be reached at 330-996-3756 or mbrecken@thebeaconjournal.com.
MEDINA: Making fine candles is a delicate balance of science and art.
The right wax has to be combined with the proper wick for the best burn. Colors have to match exactly from batch to batch. Even the fragrance and hue of a candle need to be perfectly paired to meet consumers' expectations.
Those kinds of details are the business of Medina's 140-year-old A.I. Root Co.
Root has been in business since 1869 and early on made its mark as a manufacturer of beekeeping equipment. But its founder, Amos Ives Root, set the stage for the company's current focus by rolling sheets of beeswax from his hives around wicks to create altar candles, which are still Root's flagship product.
Today, Root candles light churches and homes across the United States and beyond. The company added decorative candles in the 1960s and now produces between 2,000 and 2,200 decorative products in Medina and almost 2,000 liturgical products here and in San Antonio, said its current president, Brad Root. It employs 150 people in Medina, 15 in San Antonio and 10 sales representatives across the country who handle liturgical-candle sales.
It's a long way from the company's beginnings.
Founder A.I. Root originally repaired and made jewelry in a store on the Medina square. As Brad Root, his great-great grandson, relates the story, honeybees swarmed the store window one day in 1869, and A.I. had a worker capture the colony in a box.
His wife was not pleased. ''You paid a day's wage for a box of bugs,'' she supposedly told him.
But the acquisition sparked in A.I. a fascination with beekeeping. He saw a business opportunity in finding a better way to harvest their honey, and he went on to standardize beekeeping equipment. He wrote a book, established a magazine for beekeepers and became known around the world as ''the bee man.''
Although A.I.'s company has since gotten out of beekeeping, it continues to publish the monthly Bee Culture magazine and keeps a few hives for the edification of the magazine's editor, Kim Flottum. Flottum even advises the keeper of the White House's hive and helped figure out a way to keep the bees in check so they wouldn't annoy the participants in this year's Easter Egg Roll.
Beeswax ingredient
Today, the Root Co.'s focus is primarily on candles, but beeswax — most of it from Iowa's Sioux Honey — remains an important ingredient. It's always been used in Root's liturgical candles, and now it's blended with other natural waxes in a new line of home fragrance products called Legacy by Root. Beeswax, Brad Root explained, is desirable because it burns slower than other waxes. And in combination with other soy- and vegetable-based waxes, he said, it does a better job of emitting fragrances.
''We're trying to find a niche in the market that wants top-quality, American-made products'' made of renewable materials, he said.
At Root Candles' headquarters complex just west of Medina's town center, the company uses a variety of methods to produce its products. Some of the candles are made by pouring melted wax into tempered-glass jars. Some are made by dipping wicks repeatedly into hot wax in a computer-controlled version of the method used by early Americans. Some candles are formed in molds. Still others are made by compressing wax pellets that resemble snow.
The company's signature Grecian pillar candle, for example, starts as melted wax in a metal mold. A worker stirs the wax briskly to prevent air bubbles from forming and tops off the wax as it cools and shrinks.
When it hardens, the candle is unmolded and the wax on the end trimmed to level the candle's base. A drill press bores a hole through the candle to allow a waxed wick to be inserted, and finally the candle is pushed through hot dies to form its distinctive ridged coating.
A more unusual process involves compressing paraffin pellets under pressure.
Paraffin is sprayed onto the cold surfaces of giant, spinning drums, and then knives scrape off the hardened wax coating to form pellets that resemble snowflakes. Pistons press the pellets into molds or containers, and in some cases the rough candles are then dipped into liquid wax to form a smooth coating.
Brad Root explained the process makes candles particularly bend-resistant, a plus for tall altar candles that might be in use for weeks or more.
The pellet process is used to make Root's Timberline pillar candles, a decorative product that was the happy result of a mistake. The pellets give the candles a rough finish that couldn't be successfully smoothed, Brad Root said, but the company decided it liked the look and ended up with a marketable product.
The pellets are compressed and extruded into long cylinders that are cut to length to make the Timberline pillars. At the end of the process, a worker dips each end of the candle into a shallow pool of melted wax and gives the candle a quick twist, creating a wax design that resembles a tree.
Attention to detail
That kind of handwork isn't unusual in Root's manufacturing process. Workers can be seen inserting wicks by hand, trimming and polishing candle tops and even using what look like makeup brushes to dust candles with glitter for a retailer's special Christmas order.
The company produces decorative candles in about three fragrances during each of two daily shifts, Brad Root said. Each fragrance is thoughtfully paired with its own color to try to match consumers' perceptions, a process that can make or break a particular candle's popularity.
The company recently tweaked its pumpkin color, ''and we have people that either love it or they hate it,'' Brad Root said.
That kind of attention to detail even extends to the wicks, he said. A room at the factory is devoted to braiding either cotton fiber or a blend of cotton and rayon into various configurations, each designed for a specific purpose. He believes his company is the only candle maker that braids its own wicks, and he said significant testing goes into creating the right wick for a particular candle.
That's because manufacturing is only part of the production process.
Many sample candles are created and tested until the best combination of wick and wax is determined for each type of candle, Brad Root said. Colors are scrutinized by computer to make sure all the batches match precisely — a particular challenge because candle scraps are reused, and the effect of their dyes varies from batch to batch. As the candles are produced, samples from each batch are cut open and studied or burned under controlled conditions to measure such aspects as how long the candle burns, how big a flame it produces, how much wax drips and how much soot is emitted.
It's the scientific part of a business that has beauty as its goal. And creating that beauty is an art.
Mary Beth Breckenridge can be reached at 330-996-3756 or mbrecken@thebeaconjournal.com.
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