· The desk
A cold jar and the first melt pool
On 11 February a jar left the room at 16:40 and sat in a parked car while its owner ate on the next street. The car had been outside since morning. She came back the next day and said the first burn had lasted twenty minutes, the wax had gone liquid only in a small well around the wick, and the second burn had stayed in that well. The outer wax never softened. The edges were still level with the day she bought it.
Wax keeps a memory of the first melt. The pool you make the first time is the pool you tend to get again, because the wax that melted and reset is softer than the wax that stayed solid, and the flame takes the easy path. Twenty minutes on a cold twelve-ounce jar will not carry the liquid to the glass. The jar was also cold all the way through, so the flame spends its first heat just warming a hard surface. You end up with a tunnel, and later with a wick that drowns in the hole it made.
We pour at the bench, which we hold near 20°C, and we do not pour against the front glass. In February that glass is cold enough to pull a skin on a fresh jar. Finished jars sit ten days on the back shelf before they are sold, at the same room temperature, which is the practice on the poured page. They are not hardy against a closed car overnight. Nothing we put in a glass vessel is.
If the tunnel is shallow, a longer burn in a still room can sometimes catch the edges. The jar has to be warm to start, not just carried in from a porch. Set it on a level stand that will not burn, trim the wick to 6 mm, and let it go until the liquid reaches the glass. For our eight-ounce tumbler that is often close to two hours. For the twelve-ounce jar, longer. Do not leave the room just to satisfy a number. If the flame grows tall or smokes, stop and trim. The counter will do that cut for one of our jars. That is trim, and it requires a cold, solid top.
A deep tunnel also makes soot. The wick stands up inside the hole, longer than 6 mm against the pool, and the flame smokes into a room that has been shut against the February cold. The gray mark on a ceiling often starts there. If the tunnel is already a deep cup, more burning will only drop the wick into a hole. Bring the jar in on a day we are open. If it is one of ours and the glass is sound, we will look at it on the bench and tell you whether the surface can be leveled. We do not promise to rebuild a candle that has been burned down to the last centimeter, and we do not take a blade to wax we did not pour.
The evening out was her business. The car was not a place to leave the jar. In a Portland winter, take it inside with you.