So you've just started making candles and you're wondering - what's the best way to secure a wick in my candle ? You want it secure so it doesn't start floating around when the wax melts, this can be a little bit dangerous. There are quite a few ways to stick your wick in a candle - no pun intended...
I've tried quite a few different ways to secure a wick in a candle. Most commonly used are these little glue tabs like in the image below:
Now these work quite well for beginner candles and for people just making them at home, however I did have one issue. When the candles got down to the bottom of the jars it would all get very hot, sometimes this would cause the glue dots to become unstuck and thus I'd have a candle wick floating around in my jar.
Some of the other problems with the wick stickums is if you misplace the centre of jar they're quite hard to remove and adjust the central location of your wick, they also raise the wicks height slightly making it a bit hard to burn all of your lovely candle wax.
You can also use a glue gun to stick your wicks down, this works well in the heat and they never move. However in my personal experience it takes a bit longer to effectively do a big batch of candles.
Now the best method for securing your wick in a candle jar is to use high heat silicone gasket repair sealant... Now this may sound a bit odd but trust me it works - I can't take credit for this method as I saw it in a YouTube video from Sandely handcrafted link here.
I also use a used biro pen case, take out the middle and its the perfect wick placement device.
Now I simply put the candle wick inside the empty pen case, dab a tiny bit of silicone on the wick holder, place it in the centre of my jar and boom, we have a secure wick that's never going to set sail when the jar becomes to hot. It's so quick and easy, much quicker than a hot glue gun. It's also cheap, I know some of you maybe thinking the red glue doesn't look great but I simply cover the bottom of the jar with a CLP label and you'd never know.
Link to the Silicone Seal here.
Coincidentally if you wanted to learn how to make candles without wick tabs this article will help you too :)
