Burning Resins In Small Areas

כ' תמוז התשס"ח
Faunus 22

A few tips for gently heating and burning resin incenses in small areas:

1. Use a tea light heated oil diffuser. The candle heats the reservoir holding the resins which then heats the incense within it to release their scent. Thick soapstone is a safer choice and is less likely to 'explode' (as thin porcelain diffusers might) with dry heating or if the reservoir goes dry if heating resins with water. It's a good idea to use a little water or unscented wax chips with the resins for gentler heating, especially if using a diffuser made of finer materials.

2. Use a ventilated votive holder fitted with a double-folded piece of metal screen. Place the resins on the screen lid, and a tea candle in the bottom of the holder.

3. If using charcoal, form a little bowl using aluminum foil. Place the foil bowl over the already lit charcoal and add your resins. The foil lowers the burn temperature, thereby burning the resins slower and more gently. Use tongs when dealing with charcoal.

4. Don't burn too much resin at once indoors, as resins tend to be very smokey - you don't want to set off the smoke alarm.

5. Japanese bamboo charcoal burns cleaner than black saltpetre charcoal.

Other tips are welcome.

Element Of Environmental Stewardship

My father is an insulin dependent diabetic who faithfully checks his blood glucose regularly. The little bottles containing the diagnostic test strips make perfect storage vessels for loose herbs, small oil blends and other small witchy supplies. My father gives me his empty test strip bottles for my incense work.

The bottles are well made (One Touch Ultra), smooth black on the outside, smooth white on the inside, and each has a tightly sealing attached snap cap. Soak off the label, and they are perfect witchy little bottles! Best of all, the act of recycling (by both my father and myself) introduces another positive element (balanced environmental stewardship) into my magic.

This is very good.

Working With Gum Resins

chelbenah-galbanum resin

To make grinding sticky-soft gum resins easier, place them in the freezer for about an hour. This makes the resins harder and easier to grind. Heating liquifies resins and makes them harder to work with [1].

To clean equipment following grinding resins, pure grain alcohol like Everclear has been recommended as an effective cleaning agent. Some incense makers even use it to wash their hands prior to washing with water follow grinding to remove the stickiness.

Information source: Carl from craftywitches yahoo group

Footnote:

[1] The friction from pounding and grinding will create heat. For this reason, unless there is a contraindicating "spell reason", add resins to blends last.

Cleaning A Mortar & Pestle

Here are several possible methods of cleaning a mortar and pestle following use:

Contributed by Robin:

My recommendation would be to use bicarbonate of soda. If it is a wettable mortar, make it into a thick paste with water. Put this into the mortar and grind it around a bit with the pestle to cover both with a decent layer. Leave it for 20 minutes and rinse it out. If you still aren't happy, give the same treatment a go but add vinegar to rinse it out; it will foam in the coolest way, and between the vinegar and bicarb should get rid of the last of the flavour/smell. (maybe leaving it smelling like vinegar!)

Bicarb is just the very best thing for absorbing flavours and smells. I keep a cup of it in the fridge to absorb fridge smells and have used it with great success as a paste on plastic containers that have absorbed garlic smells.

Contributed by Saber:

One of the best methods of cleaning a brass mortar and pestle is to use half a lemon dipped in charcoal ash and gently rub all over the M & P and rinse in clean water. Dry after cleaning.

Contributed by Sara Kate:

If your mortar and pestle has an unglazed interior, the best way to clean it is to rinse it out and let it drip dry. If it is especially gunked up, you can use a hard brush to scrub, but I wouldn't even use soap because the porous nature of the ceramic will take on the scent/taste of the soap. For this reason, you only want to use your mortar and pestle to grind spices and herbs. I wouldn't mash any oils in there, for example.

Contributed by Scazza who disagrees with Sara kate regarding oils:

I have a suribatchi and it is made for grinding anything, including pastes that would have oil in it. I don't know any other way to make such a thing, even grinding garlic and salt into a paste (which would stink up your m&p). I also make pesto (since you need to pound, not cut, the greens to release the oils) and gucamole in my marble m&p.

My own contribution:

If one would like to sterilize one's mortar and pestle (those made of oven-safe materials) prior to use, after cleaning and rinsing thoroughly, cover with aluminum foil and bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes.