One thing you might want to do for white belt students is to find easy candles to work with. Once, I purchased this batch of emergency candles and I had hard time snuffing 2 of them. (My normal count is somewhere between 5 and 25 depending on fitness level)

Some people are overstressed with candle and I have seen numerous adults literally crying when they failed their grading on count of candles. Some of them even quit the dojang after.

When you train and teach HDGD for long time, you will be able to tell if a student is doing cut correctly by just looking at a couple of cuts. Candle snuffing test is more for students' benefit. They should get some visible feedback about their cuts from candle practice (you should explain to them what it is for) and they should gain confidence (not dissapointment) from doing it. If the students do not get correct cuts after a while, it is mostly instructor's failure, not students'.

I am getting candles for grading directly from Korea just to be consistant. They are fairly easy candles to put out individually and they become quite challenging to put out when bundled together. These are bit costly but that is what the grading fee is for anyways.

What do you think about these two systems?

1) student has to snuff an increasing number of candles per gup within a set number of attempts.

2) student has to snuff a static number of candles with a decreasing number of atempts per gup.

I use a combination of both. Testing for yellow belt the student gets 15 tries for one candle. Orange gets 10 tries, green 5. Then for blue it goes to two candles and 15 tries and so on. It seems that in the states at dan testing there will only be three candles. For my first dan testing I had worked up to 5 (in my one legged strange kneeling position to accomodate my knee). Doing three was kind of a let down. Master Gihm, how could I get some of the Korean candles? And (not to deliberately change the subject) how about the proper wood for the stick break (where did that discussion go?????)

I use the first system and give 20 tries to all candidates. The number of candles go from 1 for yellow and 5 for black. Candle test is not done at the main black belt test so it is done during black belt pre-test. All dojangs seem to have their own regulation about this.

I have a friend of mine in Korea to buy them and mail them to me. It costs about $100 for 390 candles (1 box) with delivery, customs tax, etc. The challenge is to find someone mail it as each box weighs ~ 45 lbs. If you are interested, I can ask him if he is willing to get them (might have to pay him some fee for time and work).

If you send me your mailing address, I will send you some I have.

The wood stick is about 1.25 inches by 1.25 inches by 2 feet. This is not a regular lumber size and it's pretty hard to find. When you see a lumber at Home Depot sized at 1 inche by 1 inches, it is actually 0.75 inch by 0.75 inch. The material used in Korea is lauan.

I would like some! I will e-mail my full address. Maybe I could pick up a larger batch when I come for Tournament in July? It looks fairly certain that we will be moving to St. Louis, Missouri in June but I can drop off my kids in Chicago on the way (more or less. . . )

Brian,

What size are the Korean candles? Like you, we have been going to the local store and getting emergency candles (5 for a dollar is a good deal). They are great for providing light in the dark but create a challenge when trying to snuff. The advantage is, when you start and learn with them, they are easier to deal with as you advance. I was able to put out up to 6 of them when training for 1st dan (don't ask about now). I have looked around for a better candle for students to train with but have not really come up with anything.

Russell