REFINING THE USED WAX
We have started to reclaim the beeswax from our church's discarded candle debris.
Step one is to collect the bits and throw them into a plastic bag in a box. Each Sunday afternoon we now have a box full of little rings of beeswax-infused sand, along with drippings, stubs and short pieces of candle.
We take it outside and separate the bits, dropping the hard chunks of sand onto the ground (eventually into the trash can).
The remainder of the bits are placed in a perforated pan and washed off with the hose. We put these remains into an old crockpot, and pour boiling water over the top. Roughly a half-gallon of water is adequate.
We turn the heat on low and put the lid on the pot.
About an hour later, we have a bunch of dark liquid in our crockpot. In reality, this is a layer of clean beeswax floating on top of the hot water. Sand and heavy debris are on the bottom, while wicks and other lighter material are floating underneath the wax.
We use the crockpot because we want the melting to go very slowly - beeswax melts around 150 degrees and the closer we can keep the wax to this point, the less it will lose its attractive smell and color.
PREPARING THE WAX FOR REUSE
At this point we have several alternatives.
Disk of Wax
We can turn off the pot and let the whole thing cool overnight. That results in a disk of wax floating on top of the water but securely "glued" to the sides of the crock pot. It has to be remelted and all the debris filtered and removed. We did this at first, and poured the large amount of wax into a bread baking pan lined with foil.
Bricks of Wax
Alternatively, we can use a ladle to lift the wax off the top of the water. Because we can't see the line separating these liquids, the ladle may contain both water and wax. We pour the wax through a metal screen into a silicone baking mold (just $9 each, from Amazon).
In an hour or so we have nice little bricks of wax (and water) which look like this.
The water drops to the bottom of the molds and comes out when we remove the blocks. On the occasional block we find some trapped water. We cut into the block, liberate the water, and remelt/repour it into a clean block of wax.
CLEANUP
At this point we have a crockpot full of congealed sand, partially burned wicks, waxy bits, and water. We've learned that the fastest approach is to have another teapot full of boiling water. We pour that into the crock pot, let it sit for a minute or two, and pour the mess out on the ground. Then we can wipe the pot clean. The rest of the boiling water gets poured through our metal screen, which cleans it off.
The ground soaks up the water and the sand and wax stay on top. We clean up the sand; bees clean up the wax.
Please come back for Part 3 where we describe how to make new candles.
