My first attempt (sadly I forgot to take photos of, sorry) was fairly simple and failed miserably. I put the glass jar with the candle wax into the microwave and heated it up until all the wax was melted. Then I poured water into the jar. I have to say watching the candle wax harden as the water it hit and the pretty design that was made was impressive, though did not reach my goal of removing the wax.
Then I realized my problem. The wax was hot, the water not so much...the cooler water was instantly cooling and hardening the wax but wasn't creating a layer of wax I could easily remove. So I started over.
The second try was more successful. This time I left the jars of wax alone and heated up the water. Once the water was boiling, I poured it over the wax in the jar.
From the pictures you can see that the wax is liquid floating on top of the hot water (sorry for the messy stove, its starting to get stained again so I need to find the last stone sponge I have...apparently I put it up so well that I hid it even from myself). I was pretty stoked. I let the jars sit until the water was room temperature and then checked on them again.
My trial was semi-successful. I say that because some of the candles fully melted and were then floating in a solid layer along the top, while others had only partially melted. I removed all of the solid candle wax that I could, the ones that were successful I set aside for washing out and the ones that still had candle wax on the bottom I put through the tip again.
Again, this was semi-successful with each time adding more hot water until eventually all the jars were mainly wax free and ready to wash out. I had multiple different brands of candles, but even then I can't say that one brand was easier to remove the wax on or cooperated better than another. I had 4 of the same brand and 1 of the jars melted completely the first time through while the other 3 jars I had to do a total of 4 times. All 4 jars had the same amount of wax in the bottom of them.
Here was one of the first successes. I did have to use a knife to cut the wax disk in half before I could remove it and I did find that I had to use a knife to run it around the edge of the disks to dislodge them from the jars.
There were still a few bits in the bottom of this jar, but nothing that I shouldn't be able to wash completely out...when I get to that part.
Overall, this is a nice time, was fairly simple, but may have to be repeated a few times to remove all the wax from the jar. I believe it took 5 or 6 times total for the last stubborn ones, but I did eventually get the wax out of all the jars. Then are sitting in my sink waiting for a good wash down as I type this (sorry, was just plain tuckered out after all the wax melting and remelting and remelting...well you get the picture).
Bottom line is the tip does work, but some patience (think wash, rinse, repeat....wash, rinse, repeat...sorry shower humor for those who have never read the label of their shampoo bottle...............I swear I only did it to see if I could pronounce the ingredients, nope I couldn't) may be needed. Save this for a day when you have extra time, other cleaning to do in between, or no where to go since the water takes at least an hour or two to cool down completely. It would probably even work to pour the boiling water in before bed and taking the solid pieces out in the morning and repeating that for a couple days. The effort was worth the reward because those pretty jars will now be used to showcase some other pretty items....maybe even display some of my body scrubs for easy use in the bathroom.
Happy St. Patrick's Day....
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