This post was originally published on December 17, 2019.
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Has this ever happened to you? You have this hurricane lamp and the candle you’ve been burning in it looks so pretty as it glows and reflects against the clear glass.
But then the wax melts. And it melts into every curve. And then it dries and sticks there. But you’re ok with it as long as there’s still enough of the wick to burn. So you continue lighting it. It melts some more and now more dramatically. The candle melts until it’s a pool of wax that dries to form a mold of your glass hurricane lamp. Completely spent.
Now all you’ve got is this sooty, melted wax filled glass jar thing.
To clean the soot, try a cotton ball or paper towel and dampen with some rubbing alcohol. An alternative is a dry, used fabric softener sheet. Hydrogen peroxide doesn’t work.
There are several methods to cleaning the wax out of the shape of its container. The method I used was boiling water.
I boiled the water in my kettle and poured it into the lamp. The boiling water made the wax malleable again. I was able to scoop out the bigger pieces.
Pouring out the water created some additional work because it was full of wax that dried quickly and ended up as a wax smear on the side of the lamp.
I poured the boiling water in a total of three times to clean most of the wax away. There still remained a residue, so I’ll have to figure that out. However, I am pleased that the wax mold is no longer at the bottom of the lamp!
