My New Jar Is Only 5 mm Wider than My Existing Container — Is That Enough of a Diameter Change to Justify Another Wick Test?

The confirm order: two arms, six candles

A confirm order exists because you are not starting from nothing. You have an approved wick for the old jar, a recipe that passed a full life, and records of what failed either side of it. The 5 mm step changes one input, the surface, by a known amount, so the question narrows to two possibilities: the current wick still reaches the glass, or it now needs the next rung. Test those two, nothing else.

The worked example on this page: the old jar is 7.5 cm inside, the candle is a labelled 200 g fill at 8% (16 g Bergamot Amber + 184 g CSI 464), and the approved wick is Eco C2, chosen in a ladder where C1 failed low and Cotton Braided ran hot. The new jar is 8.0 cm inside. Both are your jars: CSI lists no jar at 8 cm, and its three listings with a 7.5 cm figure (two glass jars with bamboo lids and a ceramic container) are all out of stock on 1 October 2026.

The optional control is one candle of the approved recipe poured into the old jar from the same pot. It costs ₹189.78 in materials and answers a question the new jar cannot: if the control misbehaves too, the change is in your oil lot, wax bag or room, not in the 5 mm. Bought from nothing except your C2 and your jars, the whole confirm order is ₹1,974.80: the Cotton Braided pack, 150 g of oil and 2 kg of wax. If you already hold C2, oil and wax, the order is the ₹120.00 pack alone.

Is 5 mm enough to matter? The surface sums

Pool area is π × r² on the inside diameter: geometry, not a burn prediction. The 5 mm step on this page adds a ring 2.5 mm wide all round, which looks like nothing in the diagram and is 6.09 cm² of wax that must melt before the pool touches the glass. The same 5 mm matters more on a narrow jar than a wide one; the full maths of 5 mm steps is the 5 mm difference post, and the short version is below.

Measure the inside, not the label. If the old jar is 8.2 cm outside with 0.35 cm walls and the new one 8.7 cm outside with 0.5 cm walls, the insides are 7.5 and 7.7 cm: "5 mm wider" is really 2 mm and 5.4% more surface (worked example). How to get the inside figure from a jar in your hand is external versus internal diameter.

Two more numbers from the same geometry. A very rough rule of thumb (about one hour of burning per 2.5 cm of width) puts a full first pool at about 3.0 hours in the old jar and 3.2 in the new one, still inside the commonly quoted 3–4 hours. And if you fill the new jar to the same height as the old 200 g, the candle grows to about 227.6 g (declared): more wax and oil per candle, more burn days, the same wick question. Whether you keep 200 g or the old fill height is a product decision; how weight and diameter split the order is the diameter-or-weight post.

Which rung is "one up" from your wick

CSI's tabbed, ready-to-use wicks are Eco C1, Eco C2 and Cotton Braided Wicks Ready Made, with pairs of C1 or C2 above them. There is no sized, tabbed wick between those rungs, and none above Cotton Braided. That makes the confirm order easy to write and occasionally impossible to fill exactly; better you know which case you are in before you order.

Why not one rung down as well? A wider jar asks more of a wick, not less: the same flame now has 13.8% more wax to melt. A rung that failed low at 7.5 cm is commonly expected to fail lower at 8 cm, so re-testing it buys a result you already hold. The exception is the case in the next-but-one section, where the new jar burns hotter for a reason other than width; that is the one time the C1 20-pack earns its place.

If Cotton Braided is already your wick, moving to a pair is a bigger change than a rung: two flames, spacing, a holder, twice the wicks per candle. The cost of adding that arm is set out in the 8.5 cm double-arm post; the revalidation list for one large wick becoming two is the one-to-two-wicks change post.

Confirm order or full re-ladder: the rupee comparison

Same worked example, both orders costed at production prices: Bergamot Amber at the 500 g price (₹5.44 a gram), CSI 464 at the 10 kg price (₹0.51 a gram), wicks at pack price per wick. Per 200 g candle, the oil is ₹86.98 and the wax ₹93.36: ₹180.34 before the wick goes in.

The re-ladder costs ₹558.71 more in materials, three more of your new jars, three more burn positions on the bench, and ₹118.00 more in wicks. It does not save time, because every arm burns in parallel. What it buys is a documented C1 fail in the new jar, which you could have predicted from the old one. For a 5 mm step, that is the definition of paying for certainty you already have.

If you are buying everything fresh (a first production in a new jar from a new supplier, say), the confirm order still uses 100 g + 50 g of oil (₹840.00) and leaves 54 g: enough for 3 more candles, one re-poured arm. The re-ladder needs two 100 g bottles (₹1,120.00) and leaves 56 g; 100 g + 50 g would leave only 6 g, not one candle.

When the shortcut is the wrong call

The two-arm order is only valid when the new jar differs from the old one in width and nothing else that matters. Before you order, run down this list. Any "yes" turns the confirm order into a full re-ladder (C1, C2 and Cotton Braided × 3), or into a different sibling post.

The last row matters if you run a range. This page costs one oil. Which of your other oils need the same six candles, and which can ride on a representative, is a triage question with its own post above; the purchase consequence is simple: each oil that needs confirming adds six candles and its oil grams, but no new wick pack, because the 10-pack's 7 spare Cotton Braided and your C2 stock cover two more oils' up-arms before you need a second pack.

And if the new jar is not "5 mm wider" but a different shape that happens to hold the same 200 g, that is a jar change, not a width change: the new-jar, same-capacity post sorts out what carries over and which rungs to top up.

Reading the six candles: what each result buys next

Run it exactly as the old approval was run, so the jar is the only thing that differs. Screen at burn 3; approve only on the full life to about 1 cm left (thresholds and depth in the acceptance-depth post, the calendar in the full-life calendar post).

If the switch to Cotton Braided happens, treat it as an up-rung change and run the up-rung risk checks on flame, pool depth, mushrooming and final-third heat before hundreds of candles: the moved-one-size-up checklist. The gap case, where C2 is too small and Cotton Braided too big, is the 9 cm problem in miniature; the ranked options are in the tunnels-with-one, too-hot-with-two post.

From a confirmed wick to the production order

Production quantity follows the same formula whichever arm wins: wicks to buy = candles × wicks per candle × (1 + allowance), with 5% as our worked-example allowance for rejects and retests (the full explainer is in the cluster hub). Because C1, C2 and Cotton Braided cost the same per wick in every pack, choose packs that add up to the number, nothing more.

Reorder point for a new Cotton Braided line: daily use × your lead time + safety stock. At 150 candles a month that is 5 wicks a day; with a 10-day order-to-bench time and a week of cover, reorder at 85 wicks. The 10 days is your figure: CSI dispatches from Pune and does not publish lead times or stock depth, so confirm dispatch on WhatsApp before a big run. How several wick lines share reorder points is the per-SKU reorder post.

If you run several jars and the new one adds Cotton Braided to a range that already holds C1 and C2, your stock is the union of the approved wicks, not one range per jar: the three-jar stock map.

What to buy for a 5 mm confirm, and what to skip

Five items, in the order the confirm order uses them, chosen on page statements, price and stock on 1 October 2026. CSI publishes no wick-performance data, so nothing here is ranked on burn results. Oil counts use 16 g per 200 g candle and 12 g per 150 g candle.

Skip for a 5 mm confirm: the Eco Braided Wicks (₹472.00 for 5 m) and the Braided Wick Roll (₹706.82), unsized and cut to length, only worth a look if the confirm order lands between C2 and Cotton Braided; Performance Wooden Wicks (₹590.00 for 10), one listing with no widths, so it cannot be "one rung up" from anything; and the Steel Wick Holder (₹250.00 for 5), unless your up-arm is a pair.

Frequently asked questions