What Should I Record When Comparing the Glass Adhesion of Different Candle Waxes?

What to record: the short answer

An adhesion comparison is only as good as its record. Wet spots are commonly linked to the glass (residues, temperature), the pour, how jars cool, where they sit and how temperatures swing afterwards — as well as to the wax. So the record has five layers: what went in (wax, oil, jar, with lot details), how it was prepared (cleaning, glass temperature, room), how it was poured (pour temperature per wax, order, time, bench position, cooling), what it looked like (four photos per jar at fixed checkpoints, a house grade with numbers hidden, rim check from above), and what happened to it in between (room minimum and maximum, any temperature cycle, any move). Every field earns its place because it lets you rule out one suspect.

The single most useful habit is the cheapest: number every jar and draw the bench before you pour. Position — the end of a row, near a wall, under a vent — is one of the commonest reasons two jars of the same wax look different, and without positions on the sheet you cannot separate a wax difference from a cooling difference. The second is photographs with names that carry the record, so that a picture found six months later still tells you which wax, which jar, which day and which side it shows.

The worked example records a comparison of Luxury Soy Wax Chunks and Natural Soy Pearl Wax in CSI's Clear Glass Jar with Golden Lid (150 gram) with Roasted Coffee at 8% — 12 g of oil and 138 g of wax per jar, five jars each. The Chunks page claims "excellent adhesion to glass and container surfaces"; the Soy Pearl page makes no adhesion statement at all. Neither publishes a measurement, which is exactly why your record has to carry the evidence.

The sheets: copy these

Three sheets cover a small comparison: a batch header (one per pour session), a jar log (one line per jar per checkpoint) and an environment log (one line per day). Keep them together with the photos in one folder named for the test.

Two notes on the jar log. Alternate the waxes along the bench (Chunks, Pearl, Chunks, Pearl…) and in pour order, so that neither wax always gets the end position or the first pour; then the bench-position column lets you check, after the fact, that no single position explains the result. And grade tops and frosting on their own lines. Frosting is a whitish crystalline bloom on the wax and rough tops are a surface finish; both are often confused with adhesion on a quick look, and a wax can do well on one and poorly on another.

The photo protocol

The workload is predictable. 10 jars × 4 sides × 5 checkpoints is 200 photos. At an example 10 seconds a photo and 30 seconds to grade each jar at each checkpoint, that is about 33 minutes of photography and 25 minutes of grading across the whole test — ₹243.06 at an example ₹250.00 an hour. Replace both figures with your own; the point is that a full record costs less than an hour of attention.

Checkpoints, and what each one tells you

The checkpoints are labelled example timings, not a standard; choose yours and keep them fixed. Each one answers a different question, which is why skipping one weakens the comparison.

For the cycle, record the settings as a labelled example condition — for instance 8 hours warm, 16 hours at room temperature, 3–5 cycles, with the warm phase kept well below CSI 468's 50–53°C melting point as a reference — or, better, record the minimum and maximum from a logger sent along your actual courier route. Never record a cycle as "normal" or "standard"; there is no standard cycle, only yours.

Reading the record

When the 7-day and post-cycle grades are in, read the record in a fixed order before you look at the wax column:

If everything above the last line passes and one wax grades clearly better at both 7 days and after the cycle, you have a wax result for this jar, this oil and this process. Write down what "this process" was, because the result does not travel without it. Adhesion as a gate for a clear-glass brand covers what to do with the result.

What a missing field costs

At production rates — Chunks at the 5 kg rate (₹599.00/kg), Soy Pearl at ₹424.80/kg (the one CSI soy wax with a real bulk break), Roasted Coffee at the 1 kg rate (₹3.74/g), an Eco Thin C1 wick at ₹5.90 as the example wick line and the Clear 150 g jar at ₹94.40 — one 150 g candle costs ₹227.82 in Chunks and ₹203.78 in Soy Pearl. It excludes labour, packaging, freight and GST.

The calendar line is the expensive one. A comparison voided at day 30 because nobody wrote down bench positions costs ₹2,157.98 in material to re-pour — and another month before you can decide. Against ₹243.06 of recording time, the record is the cheapest part of the test.

The priced comparison kit

Leftovers: 276 g of Chunks, 276 g of Soy Pearl and 4 g of oil. The Soy Pearl page publishes no pour temperature, melt point or fragrance ceiling — follow the wax maker's instructions, keep the pour at or below the Clear 150 g jar's stated 85°C, ask CSI on WhatsApp and record what you used. A min/max thermometer or data logger, a printed grid or acetate sleeve and a phone stand are non-CSI examples, not priced here.

The decision rule

Stop at the first line that is true.

File the three sheets and the photo folder with the date and test number. They are your reference for the next comparison and your evidence if a customer or a stockist asks why you chose the wax you did.

The CSI products in this comparison

Frequently asked questions