ok I have 7 pounds of this stuff in a bag...I was about to go and heat this stuff up in my microwave, but hahahaa I read the website that I bought this stuff from and they warn not to... arg.


so now I have a crockpot going,... with some water on the bottom and my candle gel in a big blob in a glass bowl ( heat safe bowl)..... Is there a faster way?


Can this stuff be microwaved?

If they instruct you not to microwave it, I strongly advise following their directions. It's their product, they should know. I know that it's dangerous to heat normal wax in the microwave (the stuff gets very hot very fast).

You *used* to be able to nuke that stuff, but they must have had some problems. I bought some three-four years back that had microwave directions on the original label, and a new label pasted over it specifically instructing the user NOT to microwave. Evil fumes, maybe? Inter-microwave gel explosions? Who knows? I think doing it on the stove with an improvised dbl boiler like you are is the best way.

Well what happens to gel candles(I experienced this when I blew out one of my gel candles) is that they can sort of "explode". I guess explode would be the wrong word to use, but the gel is prone to splattering. Since the candle is gel and not wax, it doesn't cool down quickly and if it gets on your skin it can cause problems.

There used to be an e-mail forward warning about the dangers of gel candles and I didn't think much about it until I looked at the wall behind my camera and noticed all this candle gel crap on it.

I don't doubt the splattering gel, but as for the "exploding gel candles" email that I too got last week, ya'll should eye this site when receiving spams that start "This happened to my best friend's former roommate...":
>http://www.truthorfiction.com

Look under "warnings"

Jenny

Well, I don't know about exploding, but there is some truth to that.
A friend of mine (directly! not a friend of a friend etc) is a thermal engineer at a company called Exponent (used to be called Failure Ananlysis) they do a lot of work on lawsuits etc, ensuring products are actually safe etc.
She was on a project of testing some gel candles. These particular ones had kinda gel fruit in them, and were in a glass jar.
It's something about some these gel candles can tend to 'flash'. The gel melts and collects and can then catch fire. She was telling us about how they had a whole room of the suckers all burning away, the smell (they were sickly perfumed candles) was pretty intense apparently!
So, yes, I'd follow the instructions!
cheers,
jo