You don’t want your glass jar to be spoiled by soot

Now let’s see the biggest producers of soot :- overmuch oil, overlong wicks, drafts, and too little oxygen.

So prevention is your friend here:

be sparing with the oil; keep the wick trimmed; keep the candle out of drafts.

Wait, now: how do you trim a wick in a vigil light?

You may be able to reach down in there with an icepick while the candle is still burning and knock “burnts” and accumulations of carbon off the wick. Or you may have to snuff it out (sometimes I use wrung-out wet cotton wrapped around the tips of chopsticks) and then reach down in there with a pair of scissors and snip it. You won’t be able to do that all the way down, though, since the blades of most commonly available scissors don’t reach much farther than 4 1/2 inches – and a vigil light glass is 8 inches tall. You can get 11-inch shears – but they’re spendy, and probably not a good investment for just a few candles.

Soot often doesn’t develop in a candle burn until the candle is half gone, because the tall glass restricts air. And yet most of the time, glass candles burn clean or nearly so. Overlong wicks make oversized flames — so keep that wick trimmed until it is out of reach of your scissors.

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sunny