Review on Enhance Your Space with the Furniture Creations Hanging Tear Drop Oil Warmer by Mark Repp

They are very attractive. I have white, black and blue. White and black are clearly what they are, but blue is a rich, deep blue with hints of black. It's dark but beautiful, so don't be discouraged if it looks black or isn't "blue" enough in some lighting conditions. Rope suspension at the foot: This is more than sufficient for the intended purpose. Don't squeeze it and it won't break. It shouldn't weigh any more than a ceramic bowl and some oil. It's a delicate stand, but it should handle what it's designed for without any problems. Soot: Soot formation is due to the incomplete combustion of the fuel and occurs when the cooler parts of the flame make contact with the surface. You can see this by watching a burning candle as the flame wraps around the object held above - lots of black soot. Also, the hottest part of the candle flame is some distance from the flame - the exact point depends on several factors. Air movement, wick size, wax type, etc. affect where the hottest spot is. I sometimes get a little soot on the underside, but most of the time not. Who knows why. It rubs off easily from the glazed part of the bowl, but not the unglazed part at the bottom. never mind Heat and Damage: It's easy. When using manufacturer-recommended candles, the tip of the flame is 1.5 to 2 inches from the bowl. I used a temperature probe and the temp under the bowl just in front of it never got close to the 1200+ degrees at which porcelain is fired (the highest temp I had was under 400 degrees). This distance is sufficient so that soot accumulation is infrequent. In fact, if the bowl survives its manufacture, it will survive the little candle too. In this case, the heat absorbed by the bowl is distributed over the bowl and the contents of the bowl don't get as hot. 212 degrees, enough to boil water, is to be expected and it makes perfect sense that the contents could boil. But I don't use liquid, so I can't accurately measure the temperature of the contents. Also, they sit on a bookshelf less than an inch from the books. Only here does the air movement in the room not affect the flame. The side heat dissipation doesn't stop me from even putting my finger on it and the books don't even heat up. And no soot on the books. The next shelf is about three inches above the entire holder, and the sensor reads the temperature above the holder and below the shelf above about 85 degrees when the rest of the room is about 70 degrees. Candle Burn Time: It's easy too. X amount of wax with a given wick burns for a given time. The purity of the wax affects the flame. The same thing happens with air movement - candles burn longer in still air - moving air provides more oxygen and thus the candle burns faster - seems counterintuitive because candles can blow out, but you know from camping that blowing up the embers creates a flame. An uncut wick also affects time, as the size of the flame determines the rate at which the paraffin is consumed. So don't complain about the product because the candle burns down too quickly! Choose the right candle, pay attention to its rating, and if it doesn't offer a burn time close enough to what is advertised, buy another candle and try again. Initially I was skeptical about small tea lights and the distance of the bowl from the flame, so I decided to give it a try and then adjust either the height of the candle or the size of the candle. I think something closer to the bowl might work, and a slightly thicker wick (tea candles have tiny wicks) might work too, but small candles work just fine. You just don't want to have a lot of fire under this thing - there's no need for that. You don't burn a burger! Oil, Water, and Incense: I bought these for dry incense, not oil. I did some research and based on the expected temperatures decided that a direct flame candle with a small wick (in line with recommended tealights - mine from Ikea) under a ceramic bowl with dry contents was a safe hazard. Here's what happens in my bowl: it never gets hot enough to smoke or burn the contents, so there's never any carbon deposits to clean up. The incense gets as hot as possible (I suppose it could be as high as 200 degrees at this point, but not far below 400 degrees below the bowl), but not consumed. Instead, the oils in the product evaporate and the remaining incense dries out and becomes very hard. Once it cools and I shake it in my hand, the incense solidifies and very little fragrance remains. No mess, no cleaning, and as long as it's heating up, it fills the room with fragrance but not smoke. The scent is less intense than incense but also lasts longer and smells cleaner (no smoke). Price: This seems like such a good compromise compared to the brass holders that are so expensive: it was this difference in cost that made me experiment with it. I know porcelain can break and I can't blow it up with big candles, but gently heating the incense helps. If mine ever explodes or gets so smoky that I can't clean it I will repost it. But don't expect to hear from me as I've researched and tested it - the results appear to be what they are. Disclaimer: I don't know anything about adding oil here. I also only use loose granular incense sticks, not solid incense sticks that you can buy at any cheap store. This is consumable incense. However, when the temperature in the bowl approaches 212, the water boils and the oil evaporates. Hence this will work. But boiling water needs a smaller candle, not a bigger one (who needs a squirt?). Based on what I find in the dry bowl I think not water, just oil would be the ticket. If the oil in my incense evaporates safely, then the pure oil will also evaporate. However, because the oil comes in closer contact with the peel than granulated incense, it can evaporate more quickly, resulting in a more intense distribution of the fragrance. The inside of the bowl also gets hotter, but never hotter than the bottom, right? The oil combines with the entire bowl, acting as a heat sink and actually cooling the whole thing down a bit - so your oil will be hotter than my incense stick, but your bowl will be slightly colder than mine. That's physics. Sorry for writing such a long post about a simple and inexpensive product. But so many reviews are so emotional and ill informed that I had to say something genuine.