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How To Make Incense
By Jen
Incense that beautiful smell you get wafted into your nostrils when you go anywhere exotic or into some ones home that has it burning.
Incense is used in religious ceremonies of all types and all religions and has been used and made since ancient times.
And is made with natural ingredients from the earth so it is pleasurable to smell.
It can make the most wonderful atmospheres and in the ancient times was used to help medicinal practices.
Some common scents of incense are frankincense, mastic, storax, sandalwood, cassia, juniper and lemon grass.
The most common type of incense is the one you can light and burn, making the smoke and smell they usually come in the form of cones or sticks.
Usually incense is burned in plates, bowls or shells basically anything that you can put ash or sand in however make sure it is not something that can burn!
The most common things you will need to make incense are
natural incense ingredients such as resins, woods and herbs
bamboo charcoal or makko powder - makko is needed if making cones or sticks
tweezers - to hold charcoal while lighting it
mortar & pestle- to crush ingredients used
distilled water - needed if making cones or sticks
2 mixing bowls to put the crushed ingredients in
Measuring cup or spoons and a gram measurer
Wax paper - for drying some recipes
And of course a spoon to help mix all the ingredients of your incense together.
Ok for your ingredients on how to make incense you can visit most herbal health stores to collect them, select the most inviting fragrant ingredients that you can find however remember to store your ingredients in a cool place.
Crush your ingredients using the mortal and pestle, crush into a fine dust, however this may take a while depending on the ingredients you have selected.
Some health shops can actually provide powdered resins woods or herbs.
Mix all the dry ingredients together first and then mix all your resins together then add them together in the mortar and pestle make sure you get a fine powder.
Age the mixture for a couple of weeks to get that aroma smelling really strong.
Now we need to combine the incense mixture with makko which is a combustible substance made from the bark of the tabu-no-ki tree in Asia.
Add about 25-80% of your makko to the incense mixture, then add a little water to your mixture then need it into little cones or sticks.
If making sticks, roll the incense mixture on wax paper or gather some bamboo sticks and roll the incense around it.
Now you will need to let the incense dry for a couple of weeks however keep the incense away from heat and sunlight as they could ignite themselves and we really don't want that.
After the incense has dried out light one and see how it burns if they burn to quickly adjust the makko content and if they burn to slow adjust it as well, a good idea to adjusting is that you can always grind up your incense that you have made and start again.
Now you can experiment with different kinds of ingredients to make different fragrances However remember to write down your recipes for later reference as well, heck if you get real good at it you could sell it.
See Also:
more information on how to make incense
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