Why is it necessary to trim candle wicks?
Well, there are several reasons, but just as a blanket statement, it will give you the best overall performance out of your candle.
Is it totally necessary to trim your wick? Do you have to do it every time? No and No. It's just recommended in order to get optimal performance out of the life of your candle, but it does make a huge difference if you'll take the time to do it! If you have time every once in a while but not every single time you light the candle, that's okay too and will still help a ton with the things we're going to mention here.
Benefits to trimming your candle's wick:
-More even and consistent burn
-Significantly reduces sooting (black smoke coming from the candle's flame)
-Keeps flame smaller which extends the life of the candle tremendously
-Keeps the jar from getting as hot
-Keeps unnecessary debris out of your candle that would otherwise eventually fall off the wick
How do I trim a candle wick?
So as you can see, there are plenty of reasons to consider trimming your wick. Next comes the question... How do I trim my wick? What's the best way to do it? They do make a wick trimming tool that looks like this;
But most of us don't have one of those just laying around. Also, it takes a little getting used to, and until you are, it can be a good way to accidentally break your wick off flush with the wax, which is exactly what we DON'T want to happen when trimming a wick. So if you don't have one of these already, or just aren't familiar with one and/or don't want to become familiar with one... here's our insider tip. The best thing we know to use that's already likely at your house (we hope you have a pair) are finger nail clippers. They make it hard to mess up and break the wick lower than you intend to. They make a clean cut. You probably already have them. It's a win win.
Keep in mind, if you can achieve a clean cut you can use anything that works that you have on hand. Scissors, diagonal pliers, craft pliers. We just recommend finger nail clippers because they work really well for this and are readily available.
When trimming the wick you only want to take a little bit off the top. Ideally, you want to trim it to 1/4", but if you aren't sure what that would look like, we have one more trick for you. After an extended burn session (3-5 hours+) you will likely have some 'mushrooming' at the tip of the wick. Just simply trimming that off will help a TON. Here's a pic of before and after trimming the mushroom off of a wick.
Shown in the image above is one of our fall/winter best sellers, Winter Chill, which can be found here:
If you don't have mushrooming after burning, you will likely at least have a bend in the top of the wick. This is totally normally and is actually because these type of wicks are called 'curling' wicks and they do this as a sort of 'self trimming' method, however, it's best if we assist it and trim before relighting. In this case, our tip is to trim the wick right at the elbow or 90 degree bend where the curl starts. Here is a before and after picture of that.
Shown in this image is our Caribbean Teakwood candle, which can be found here:
We hope this short post about trimming your candle wick has been helpful. If you have any questions or comments, please don't hesitate to reach out to us!
Email: info@wisecandleshop.com
GOD BLESS YOU!