Tucked away in Ballard's warehouse neighborhood, just behind the Add Bardahl neon sign, sits a manufacturing plant that has been in business in Seattle for nearly 50 years.

It's an industrial-looking place. Within its walls, men bang on sheet metal, operate big machines, melt plastic and solder with hot irons. Outside, on a nondescript green awning in simple white letters, it says Pourette Mfg Co.

Everything about the place says no-frills factory, save for one thing: its fragrant and sweet smell. Pourette makes the things that go into creating candles and soaps, such as molds, dyes and bottled scented oils.

The 14,000-square-foot plant churns out close to 700,000 metal and plastic molds per year and countless pounds of scented oils, wicks, wax and glycerin. About half of the inventory is shipped all over the world via catalog sales. Internet sales account for another 40 percent, and the small storefront in Ballard sells the remaining 10 percent.

The plant is one of two candle-making supply businesses listed in the Seattle region Yellow Pages.

Inside the Ballard shop, people can browse the many types of candles that come out of Pourette's molds. Plastic molds create more intricate candles -- aliens, skulls, unicorns, Stars of David, Buddhas, crosses, witches and warlocks, and every kind of religious symbol imaginable. Candles made from metal molds are more basic: cylinders, stars and squares.

"Most of it's holiday driven," President Mike Kovacs said of the popular sellers. "Mushrooms are always big."

Don and Ray Olsen converted the business from a heating oil and sheet metal shop in 1958 after one of the brothers made a candle mold for his mom, Kovacs said. The Olsens have since retired, and Kovacs gained sole ownership in 1993. Two years later, he moved the business from Roosevelt Way to Ballard. Most of the same machines from the 1950s are still in place.

"Now instead of making parts for somebody's furnace, we make candle molds," said Kovacs, who first started working at Pourette in 1980 to earn extra gas and beer money.

Seattleites come into the shop searching for craft ideas, eager to make small soaps for gift baskets or to ask for custom molds. Pourette can make a candle or soap mold out of any hard object, Kovacs said, showing off an Elvis bust and a fish that was formed from a cologne bottle. The molds range from about $2 to $12.

"People put them in gift baskets," he said. "We do a lot of custom molds for people."

		Scott Eklund / P-I
	Graham Peberdy solders the seam on a mold at Pourette Manufac- turing Co. The firm makes supplies for candle makers.

Order sizes vary from one mold to 50, and customers extend from Yankee Candle, a major candle manufacturer, to hobbyists and resellers around the world. Some customers buy the molds to make their own candles, which they then sell. Others resell the molds themselves, at a markup.

The factory floor is separated into sections. Metal molds are made in one spot, plastic molds in another. In another section, a woman was pouring colored dye into pans to make the color chips on a recent day. The center of the floor contains rows of boxes filled to the brim with custom molds -- a three-ring binder keeps inventory. Behind the windows overlooking the factory floor are the upstairs offices. Those windows double as the low-tech intercom system, Kovacs joked.

For customers who are curious or who want to take up candle making as a hobby, Kovacs, 45, keeps how-to books.

Making a candle is easy, he said. Melt the wax to 190 degrees, stir in some color and perhaps some scented oil. Put the candle mold in a holder, secure the wick in a specially designed hole and pour in the hot wax. After it's all dry, open the mold and voila: a candle.

If a mottled look emerges, that means the wax contains too much scented oil -- an effect that can be eliminated by adding vybar, a hydrocarbon additive, to the wax.

"It's candle making, it's not rocket science," Kovacs said.

IF YOU GO

Pourette Mfg Co.

1418 N.W. 53rd St., Seattle

Store hours: Monday-Saturday, 9 a.m.-5 p.m.

Summer: Monday-Friday, 9 a.m.-5 p.m.

206-789-3188

pourette.com