My Candle Burns Well at 6% Fragrance but Tunnels After I Increase the Same Fragrance to 9% — Do I Need to Retest the Wick?

The bill for three extra points

Going from 6% to 9% of a 200 g candle takes the oil from 12 g to 18 g: 50% more. Load is a percentage of total weight (CSI's convention), so the wax falls from 188 g to 182 g and the fill line stays put. Both loads are inside Bergamot Amber's stated "6-10% for soy wax candles" and inside CSI 464's "up to 10%" whichever weight that refers to (9% of the candle is 9.89% of the wax). Where the basis does matter, at 10%, is the unscented-versus-10% re-bracket post.

At volume the per-candle gap becomes a monthly line in your accounts. The wick step is in the right-hand column: it is what most makers think they are deciding about.

The hidden cost: a second wick on the shelf

If the 9% line moves to Cotton Braided while your other candles stay on C2, you now buy, count, store and reorder two wicks instead of one. The per-wick difference is small; the cash tied up is not nothing. Worked example: 200 candles a month, a 5% allowance and two weeks of safety stock.

Two rules keep this under control. First, a second wick SKU is only worth carrying for a product that earns it; if 9% is a marginal throw gain, the SKU is pure overhead. Second, if just one oil in your range needs the second wick, the real choice is between stocking it and keeping that oil at a load your house wick carries, which is the stock-it-or-change-the-load post. What to do with surplus stock of the old wick when a line moves is the wick-down transition post.

One pour that answers both questions

Your C2 at 9% has already failed low, so it is not repeated. The bracket at 9% runs from Cotton Braided (the single rung above C2) to two C1 (the configuration above Cotton Braided). The 6% candles on C2 are the controls for the throw comparison: the approved product, made fresh in the same batch so cure and room are identical. An 8 cm inside diameter is 50.27 cm² for one wick, or 25.13 cm² each for two.

Why two 100 g bottles and not 100 g + 50 g (₹840.00)? The cheaper pair leaves 6 g, not a single candle. Two 100 g leave 56 g, exactly enough to re-pour one three-candle 9% cell if one candle in it misbehaves. Bergamot Amber's 50 g and 100 g are the same ₹5.60 a gram, so the extra bottle buys a re-pour, not a premium.

In materials the nine candles consume ₹1,746.37 (₹806.40 of oil, ₹840.25 of wax, ₹99.72 of wicks), plus your jars.

Deciding: throw first, then burn

The 9% candles that tunnelled on C2 cannot tell you how 9% throws: a short, narrow pool under-reports any load. That is why the throw comparison uses the 9% candles on wicks that reach the glass. Around day 7, once all nine have had at least one full first burn, run a blind comparison: a 6% control and a 9% candle from the leading cell, lit in turn in the same closed room, testers stepping outside between sniffs, codes hidden. Rooms, fan settings and tester counts are yours; the method is well established, the thresholds below are our judgement.

The two gates for the burn itself (a screen at burn 3, then all three candles to about 1 cm left) are set out in the cluster hub's approval rule; how far down a test candle has to go before it counts is the acceptance-depth post. In an 8 cm jar the lower third is where a step up to Cotton Braided tends to show its cost, which is why the 8 cm C2-versus-Cotton Braided post reads the decision there.

What skipping the test can cost

Some makers skip straight to production: the tunnel says "bigger wick", Cotton Braided is the next one up, so they order a 100-pack and pour. Here is what that bet puts on the table. A 200-candle batch of the 9% line on Cotton Braided holds ₹40,442.56 of oil, wax and wick at production prices, before jars, labels, boxes or labour. If those candles turn out to run hot in the final third, or to throw no better than the 6% line, that money is spent on a product you would not have approved.

Against it, the nine-candle grid consumes ₹1,746.37: 4.3% of one batch. Put another way, at 200 candles a month the grid costs about 8 days of the 9% premium you would be paying anyway if you went ahead. The test is the cheap part of the decision; it is also the only part that can say no.

A wick change can also go wrong at the bottom of the jar rather than the top, which is why the production order waits for a full-life pass on all three candles of the winning cell. Change control for a line that is already selling, as opposed to a new 9% product, is a wider question: which changes need a quick confirmation and which a full revalidation is the 20-SKU change-control post.

If the answer is yes: the 9% production order

Size the order from production: wicks = candles × wicks per candle × (1 + allowance), 5% as our worked-example allowance. At 200 candles a month on Cotton Braided that is 210 wicks, two 100-packs and a 10-pack (₹2,520.00). Cotton Braided is flat at ₹12.00 in every pack, so choose packs that add up to the number and stop. Oil is the bigger order: 200 × 18 g = 3,600 g a month: three 1 kg bottles, a 500 g and a 100 g (₹5.44 a gram for the 1 kg, ₹5.44 for the 500 g, ₹5.60 for the 100 g).

Reorder point = daily use × lead time + safety stock. At about 7 wicks a day, a 10-day order-to-bench time (your figure; CSI dispatches from Pune and publishes no lead times or stock depth) and the 105-wick safety stock above, reorder Cotton Braided at about 175. Reorder points for several wick SKUs at once are the reorder-point post; and if the load rise is one of several across your range, the requalification plan is the collection-wide load-change post, not this one.

What to buy for the test

Five items, in the order the grid uses them, chosen on page statements, price and stock on 1 October 2026. CSI publishes no wick-performance data, so nothing is ranked on burn results. Oil candle counts use 18 g per 200 g candle at 9% and 12 g at 6%.

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