Revitalizing a Jar Candle

Have you ever bought an expensive jar candle only to have it burn down the middle and end up with a stub of a wick that cannot be lit?I finally decided to try and revitalize these no longer functioning jar candles. The problem as I saw it was a lack of wick. I feel like that Dyson vacuum cleaner guy who says, "with the proper amount of suction."

So to solve this problem I needed to pull the wick up out of the wax so that it could be lit and once lit produce a large enough flame to melt all the wax on the top of the candle.

The wax needed to be liquid for me to be able to pull the wick up and out of the wax. The microwave was out of the question because the wick has a little metal holder in the bottom of the candle. I decided to try the oven.....but what temperature should I use? I thought I would start at 100 degrees but my oven cannot be set that low. The lowest setting I was able to achieve with my oven was 170 degrees. So 170 degrees was where I set it.

I placed the jar candle in a Pyrex dish just to make sure if the jar did crack and lose wax that it would be contained in the dish. This worked perfect. The jar did not crack and eventually all the wax was melted.

Once the wax was melted I took the dish with the jar candle out of the oven leaving the jar candle in the dish. I used a pair of tweezers to grab hold of the wick and gently lifted the wick up about 3/4 of an inch above the wax. This is also the perfect time to center the wick in the middle of the jar. At this point I left the wax to slowly cool.

I was feeling pretty sure of myself so I got brave and put another candle in the oven to melt. This time I decided to add two additional wicks to make a one wick candle into a three wick candle.

You can buy wick and wick holders at Michael's, I just so happen to have some wick and wick holders. I cut a length of wick and pulled it through the wick holder and then crimped the wick holder to keep the wick in the holder.Once the wax in the next jar was completely melted I removed it from the oven. Using the tweezers, I slowly dropped the wick and wick holder into the liquid wax. Make sure your wick is as straight as possible before lowering into the wax because once it hits the hot wax it will become very pliable. snicker snicker As the wax cools you may need to prop up the wick until the wax firms up.

I can now sleep soundly knowing that my candles are burning brightly and have the proper amount of wick!