As you can see from these two pictures, the wax has gone totally solid in the pots. The pink one has even shrunk away from the sides of the pot.
I actually first did this experiment with a pot of blue, which I didn't photograph beforehand, but it was exactly the same.
The first product I tried was the Daler Rowney Low Odour Thinners, and I have to say, I really can't smell anything from it at all. I made a few grooves in the top of each pot, and added 1millilitre to the green one, which was how much I ended up using in the blue one.
I put the lid back on, and left it to soak in.
I gave the pink one the same amount of Zest-It, and by then I'd discovered I also had the Creative Expressions Blending Solution, I must have received that along with the waxes, so I used that one with the gold pot.
I put the lids on them all, and left them overnight.
By the way, if you do have a problem with any chemical smell, as the name suggests, the Zest it has a Citrus smell.
I have some small syringes I use for silicone glue, so that's how I knew how much I was adding. I'd guess it amounts to about 10 drops.
Next day, I took off the lids, and the wax had softened enough I was able to smoosh it round with a palette knife. Yesterday, I'd struggled to score lines in them with a scalpel!
This was the blue after I'd softened it.
I've rubbed some onto some textured black card, so you can see they are now useable.
I can't honestly say any one of the solutions worked better than another,they all did the job perfectly well.
So, if you have a bottle of Gamsol/ Low Odour Thinners , or they can be easily found in a local art supply store, then I'd go with that for ease of availability. Zest-It is available through Amazon, certainly, and the Blending Solution is available from a number of craft stores, if you run a Google search for it.
I hopefully have a solution to the fit of the lids, which I'm trying out.
What I've done is add a square of cling film over the top of the pot before putting the lid on, and I'll report back in a few weeks if the newly reconstituted wax stays soft.
So, I hope this is helpful- these pots of wax are not cheap, and certainly I'd not be happy about having to just toss them out, especially if I'd gone out and bought them.
One thing I would suggest is to carefully assess just how dried out your pots are before deciding how much solution to add, whichever one you choose. Like I said, mine were rock solid, and I tried it with one pot first, figuring as it was unusable anyway, I had nothing to lose.
I'd say try a few drops- maybe 5- first off, scoring lines in the top of the wax if you can. Leave overnight, and if need be you can always repeat the process.
The info I found about the CS Blending Solution says you can add a few drops to a little wax, and mix to make a paint, so it would be possible to thin them down too much to use as a gilding wax. You can always add more if needed, but you're not going to be able to take it away, unless you left it open to dry out again!