Candle with extreme care

I'd accumulated a few scented candles that had all burned themselves out but leaving plenty of wax behind, so had it in my head to melt them all down and make new ones.  I actually bought new wicks two summers ago – I remember it well because I was on my way to Hobbycraft when my bike's gear lever fell to bits.

I got stuck in today, but it was a bit of an operation.  My double boiler barely got hot enough to melt the pieces.  Then, as I suspected, I found that candle wax is pretty much immune to microwaves.  In the end I put all the pieces in a container, in a tray, in the oven.  This had the handy side effect of revealing which of my spare takeaway containers were ovenproof and which weren't quite.

Melting the wax took 15 or 20 minutes at about 160ºC.  While pouring some hot wax into the tall, white candle that had burned away its middle, it poured out of a little hole in the bottom and puddled over the greaseproof paper and the new workbench.  At least that made it easy to collect and dump back in.  But in the end I thought better of it and remelted it into another jar that I found in the garage where I'd been using the wax on drawer runners.

It took three hours but I managed to make three new candles.  The only problem is, I can't stand the smell of them now!