Crayons

Different colored crayons in a pile

Do you like to color or draw with crayons? Have you ever thought about how those colorful crayons are created? Crayons are made by melting clear wax at a factory. Sometimes other ingredients are added to make the wax hard enough. Colored powder is then added to the vat of hot wax. Each vat of hot wax gets its’ own colored powdered added to it. The colorful wax is poured into molds filled with many holes that are the shape of crayons. At this point the colorful wax is still hot and needs to be cooled. The molds are cooled by cold water that runs underneath them. Once the crayons have been cooled they are pushed out of the molds and checked to make sure they look good. If there are any marks in the crayons they will be melted and then placed in the molds again. If the crayons look good they are sent to another machine that places paper on them that matches the color of the crayon and has the name of the color on it. The crayons are then sorted and boxed and sent out to stores so kids can buy them and color with them!

 

Different colored crayons in their box
A melter machine used in the making of crayons
Did You Know?
  • Did you know the name crayon comes from the Latin words for chalk, “craie” and earth, “creta”?
  • Did you know that some crayons contain stearic acid, which comes from beef fat? That is what gives those crayons such a recognizable smell!
  • Did you know that the first crayons contained ingredients that were toxic to children?
  • Did you know that archeologists found a 10,000 year old piece of ochre (a red pigment) that they think may have been one of the first crayons?