We weren’t really feeling like doing anything too physical today so we decided to try something else new – recycling a big basket of bits and pieces of candles that was left in the house when we moved in. We’ve thought about doing this for a while, but never really had all the pieces until lately. I bought wick on eBay a couple weeks ago and we are going to use some of the glass lid liter jars (also from eBay) which have chipped rims and can’t be used for canning.
I’ve put together a little tutorial video while I did this which you can view below. The quality is a bit poor but otherwise it was taking too long to buffer so please forgive me. Hope you enjoy it…and below are a few more notes and instructions about recycling candles.
Recycling old candles isn’t really all that difficult but you should be a little bit cautious. If you overheat the wax, it can be very dangerous. Never try to boil wax. You should use a relatively low heat and we had it warm enough that the pot of water was just starting to make bubbles but not boiling; a setting of 6-7 on our range. If the wax should start to produce smoke, turn off the stove, remove it from heat and walk away until it cools down. If the vapors should happen to ignite, use a metal pot lid or a wet towel to cover the fire and extinguish it.
Use a water bath method to melt the wax. You can use either two pots that fit into each other or a pot with a glass bowl set inside of it. If the pots run a risk of touching each other on the bottom, you may want to put something in the bottom of the pot of water to prevent contact between the two.
The wax will melt relatively slowly and as it does you may notice impurities and other things floating in the wax. You may even have wicks if you don’t choose to break up the candles first or if you’re using lost of pieces of tapers. We used a flat-head screwdriver to tunnel into the candles and break them apart. The smaller you make the pieces, the less time it will take for the wax to melt.
It took about 1 hour to melt the first batch of wax but we were still experimenting with the heat setting. The second set of wax for a 1 liter candle only took about 30 minutes, perhaps even less. We used about seven 2-inch tall pillar candle stubs for the 2 large candles plus one votive-style candle. For fun we also put in several drops of essential oils in one of the batches of melted wax. We’ll see if we used enough once it’s set but at the moment the smell is still very noticeable.
We’re still testing the best method to set the wicks and thought we had something worked out but it’s not quite perfect yet. We read using a bit of wax on the bottom of the jar will help to set the wick but unfortunately when the new hot wax is added on top, the wax holding the wick in place melts and it’s difficult to get it placed in the middle again. We also tried pouring about 1/2-inch of wax into the jar, setting the wick and letting it cool a bit, then adding the rest of the wax; but again the wax holding-layer melted and the wick loosened. So perhaps we need to put a bit more wax on the bottom to cool before we pour the rest on. Just have to see how the next few candles work out as we play with things.
