Hot Wax on Vinyl

We don't have very many candle holders in our apartment, but we do have plenty of tall candles. Go figure. As long as I'm playing around with making a fruit bowl or lampshade I might as well continue with throwing records into the oven and reshaping them.

This time around there are no cuts to make. All you need is a record, an oven, some corks, a knife, and an apple.

The apple is very important.

Looking around my apartment for cylindrical forms that are the same width as a tapered candle, I found that corks are perfect.

When you find four good specimens, cut off a half-inch or so, this part is up to you. Cut one first to use as a guide for the size of the others. Corks can have angled or rounded ends and the cut helps to flatten out one side.

You can use a pan or something else that's flat and oven-safe. Now place the corks a little further out from where you want the final candle positions to be.

Put the record on top, being careful to position it so that the corks are all in the correct places.

Now drop it into the oven, which should be at 200F and wait.

The ends will flop over, but the middle needs some convincing so place an apple in the middle. This will push the label down onto the surface.

As the record softens more, the corks will start to lean inward as the apple pulls the to the middle. Rotate the pan and nudge the bottoms of the corks so that they are straight again.

Recheck the corks. If they've moved again, correct them. If the record has settled as far as it will go, take the whole thing out of the oven and put it on the stove.

With both hands (one of mine was using the camera here), push the record around the corks as much as possible. This is the final shaping of the record and in less than a minute it will cool and harden.

After it's all over, does it look good? If it is, you're done! If not, just throw it back into the oven and keep working it. You can always go back.

The shape here does a better job of accommodating the candles than really holding them. They're not going to stand there on their own, so help out a bit by dripping some hot wax into the spot and fixing a candle into place with it.

Candle meets flame.

Now sit and relax for a bit. Maybe drink a glass of wine. And activate your personalized playlist of digitized music from your personal computer.