How Do I Create a Wick QC Specification Covering Dimensions, Tab Attachment, Straightness, Consistency, Flame Behaviour, Mushrooming, Melt Pool and Full-Life Burn Performance?

Why a wick specification belongs on paper

Most small candle businesses already check their wicks in some way. What they rarely have is a written specification: one document that says, for each approved wick, what is checked, how, against what reference, what counts as a pass, and how often. Without it, goods-in decisions drift. A slightly thick lot gets waved through in a busy week and held in a quiet one. A new team member checks different things from the owner. And when a customer complaint arrives months later, there is no record of what the lot was checked against.

A wick QC specification fixes that. It is not a supplier document; CSI, like many suppliers, does not publish wick dimensions, tolerances, tab sizes or burn-rate charts. It is your document, built from your own measurements of an approved lot and your own burn tests in your own candles. Every figure in it is a reference you established and a tolerance you chose as a starting point, to be tightened or relaxed as your records grow.

This page gives the structure: the header, each parameter from dimensions to full-life burn, the method, the acceptance criterion and the frequency, plus a worked costing of what running the specification costs in a year.

The header: what the specification applies to

One specification per approved wick and product family. If the same wick is approved in two very different jars, it may need two burn sections. The header anchors everything else.

The parameters: method, criterion and frequency

The table below is the core of the document. Each row is a parameter from the title of this page, with a suggested method, a suggested starting-point acceptance criterion and a suggested frequency. None of these is a standard. Replace the wording with your own figures once you have them.

Notice that the every-lot rows need only a short session, while the full-life row is the expensive one. That split is deliberate. The quick rows catch the obvious changes cheaply and often; the full-life row catches slow, late-burn differences rarely but thoroughly. If budget forces a choice, keep the frequency of the cheap rows and never delete the full-life row altogether, because the bottom of the jar is where the most serious wick problems appear.

Worked example: costing a year of the specification

Suppose the wick in question goes into a 500 g candle in the CSI Apothecary Glass Candle Jar with Dome Lid, listed at ₹212.40 for the 500 gm size. You use Luxury Soy Wax Chunks, bought at 10 kg for ₹5,999.00, so ₹599.90 per kg, and Sandalwood at ₹5,026.80 per kg, at 8% of total candle weight: 500 × 0.08 = 40 g of oil and 460 g of wax.

If you receive a new wick lot every month and the every-lot rows in the specification call for a matched pair, one new-lot candle and one control, that is 12 × 2 = 24 candles a year, costing 24 × ₹689.42 = ₹16,546.08 in materials before wicks. Add two routine full-life pairs a year, four more candles at 4 × ₹689.42 = ₹2,757.68, and the specification costs ₹19,303.76 a year in materials.

That is a real sum for a large candle, and it is the reason the specification separates every-lot checks from triggered ones. You might reasonably decide, for a large jar like this, that the every-lot comparison is run in a smaller candle using the same wax and fragrance, and the full 500 g burn is reserved for triggers and the twice-yearly routine. Write that decision into the specification so it is applied consistently. Sandalwood's page states a flashpoint of 203°C, 0% vanillin and a soy limit of up to 10%, so the 8% load and colour stability should not complicate the comparison.

Using the specification at goods-in, and keeping it alive

Print the specification and keep it at the goods-in bench beside the reference card. For each delivery, fill in a record sheet that follows the same rows: parameter, result, pass or fail, initials. The final line is the status: accepted, conditionally released with a written rule, quarantined, or rejected. File the record with the invoice.

Review the specification after every failure and at least once a year. If a criterion never catches anything and your complaints are low, it may be safe to relax its frequency. If a problem reached customers that the specification should have caught, add or tighten a row. Treat supplier replies as evidence too: when you ask CSI a question on WhatsApp at +91 7397976926, record the answer against the lot and, if it changes your reference, revise the document. A specification is only honest if it applies equally to every supplier, including us: a lot that fails a row stays in quarantine until the reason is understood.

Where this page fits

CSI already has guides that cover parts of this question. This page covers the goods-in check for the question above; these go deeper on the rest:

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