Re: is it possible to make candls out of pork fats?

Absolutely, although I'm not sure you would want to. From the beginning, candles have been made from animal fats, which are rendered to produce tallow. Tallow candles were in use all over the world for millenia before the discovery of paraffin wax in the 1800's. For the most part, in Europe and the Middle East, tallow for candles was obtained from the suets of cows and sheep. This is due in part to the economic availability of these animal fats, as well as their hardness. Even so, the main reason against making tallow candles from lard (pig fat) is smell. On the whole, tallow candles give off strong, distinctive odors that would probably offend most modern noses. While suet tallows were moderately offensive (even back in the Middle Ages), lard tallow was apparently even less appealing. Another avenue you might try would be to use the pig fat to make lard oil for use in an oil lamp. The difference in fatty acid composition between tallows and oils gives them their different melting points, but otherwise, oil lamps have been used as light sources since probably before candles. However, even with lamp oil, animal fats are smelly, so most oil lamps used vegetable oils, just as the more expensive candles used beeswax or some highly prized, vegetable wax to eliminate the odor.