Readers Respond: What's Your Best Candle Making Safety Tip?

Responses: 7

By David Fisher, About.com Guide

I use an old camp coffee pot to melt and pour wax into mold/container. Works great!
—fourwd52

Try a wad of foam tied to a long stick, dip it in oil and grease the inside of your candle mold. Don't try digging the candle out with a knife, or re-heating it. Try an overnight freeze instead. A sharp tap and the candle should slide out!
—beved

I have always melted my wax in the double boiler...until I decided to start using the Presto Melt Pot. The thought was it would make it all faster, which it does. Just be careful you do NOT touch the elbow that comes off the valve. If you are unfortunate as I was, wax will go everywhere as you are jumping from the reaction. If it is soy wax, it is not as bad, beeswax on the other hand is a whole different story. So I would two thumbs up say, "Do not touch the elbow (spout) on the Presto Pot. It is HOT and I mean PRESTO HOT!"
—RiaWallace

Buying candles in the store is probably the safest tip I can think of. Of course, when I tried to make a candle once, I ended up scraping wax off of a variety of surfaces (including my own hands and arms), so maybe I'm not the best judge. :-)
—PaigeExercise

Make sure you have a safe way to pour -- a regular saucepan doesn't have an indentation, so it's likely that the hot wax will splash.
—susehahna

The double boiler is key, and make sure you don't boil all the water out. If the wax never gets hotter than boiling water, you'll never have a fire (although it can still burn you). Melting wax directly on a flame or burner is simply asking for trouble.
—college_admissions

I agree that leaving the wax unattended is a bad safety hazard, but once I left some wax with a young but (I thought) fairly mature 13-year-old "just for a minute". I came back to see her about to test the wax with her fingertip. I stopped her, but man, never again. Attended = me or another responsible adult, ONLY.
—Guest Jenn