When Changing Candle Wax, What Should I Retest: Fragrance Load, Mixing Temperature, Pour Temperature, Wick Size, Hot Throw, Appearance, Heat Stability or the Entire Candle System?

The master checklist

Every item in the title can be affected by a wax change, so none of them can be ticked off without a thought. But the depth of retest depends on what kind of change it is. Four kinds cover almost every real case. A — a new lot of the same wax from the same supplier: the product has not changed, but lot-to-lot consistency is not something CSI or most suppliers publish, so you confirm rather than assume. B — the same kind of wax from a new supplier: soy for soy, a different product. C — a different wax type: soy to coconut-soy, soy to a soy-paraffin blend. D — a change inside your own blend: a new ratio or a small additive.

Read the table by columns first. Column A is mostly CONFIRM and KEEP: a short side-by-side against a retained candle from the last good lot, and a full-life burn of one candle. Columns B and C are mostly REPEAT and NEW: the wax is a different product, so its maker's figures replace the old ones and every behaviour of the finished candle has to be shown again. Column D sits in between — the ingredients are familiar, the proportions are not — and its heaviest line is heat stability, because that is usually why the ratio or additive changed.

Item by item: what the verdict means in practice

Fragrance load

Your load was never just "what works"; it was a figure inside a wax maker's stated maximum. CSI publishes two: Luxury Soy Wax Chunks up to 13% and Luxury Soy Wax CSI 464 up to 10%, both formulation maximums rather than targets or regulatory limits. No ceiling is quoted in this series for Natural Soy Pearl Wax, Premium Coconut Soy Wax CSI 468, Coconut Wax, paraffin, microcrystalline, beeswax or any blend. So for columns B, C and D the load becomes NEW: get the new figure, then test your old load before changing it. The oil-droplets post covers the case where practical capacity differs from the published figure.

Mixing and pour temperatures

Temperatures are instructions that come with a wax. The only CSI temperature on record is CSI's guidance for CSI 464 — melt and pour at 80–90°C, confirm on the product page — and it applies to CSI 464 alone. For any other wax, follow that wax maker's instructions; for a blend, write down the order and method you use so it can be repeated. The fragrance-addition temperature is a process setting, not the oil's flash point, which is a storage and transport property on the MSDS.

Wick size

The wick is sized to a melt pool, and the melt pool belongs to the whole wax system. CSI publishes no wick-size-per-diameter chart and no claim that any of its wicks is equivalent to another, so the test is always a bracket: your current wick and one alternative, three candles each, against a control. In column A a single side-by-side is usually enough; in B and C the bracket is the minimum; in D it starts as a confirmation and becomes a full bracket if the lines move. The tunnelling post shows what a moved line looks like.

Hot and cold throw

Throw is scored blind: candles coded, same room, same burn time, two assessors who did not pour them, three sessions, order swapped. "Within one point of control on a 1–5 scale in two of three sessions" is a working rule this series uses; tighten it for a flagship product. If the change was made to improve throw, the test is a benefit test, not a no-worse test — the soy-paraffin post sets it up, and it only runs after the safety lines have passed.

Appearance and heat stability

Tops, glass adhesion, frosting and colour are properties of the wax in your jar; CSI publishes no whiteness, frosting or crystallisation data for any wax. Photograph test and control together at each checkpoint. Heat stability means storing test and control side by side in the hottest place your stock actually sits and comparing sweating, softening and droplets — the line that the harder-wax post turns into a full storage track.

The entire candle system

The last line in every column is a full-life burn, because it is the only test in which every other item acts at once — load, wick, wax, jar and the heat that builds in the last third. It is not optional in any column. In column A it can be a single candle; in B, C and D it is at least one candle of the chosen variant, burnt to the end of usable wax beside a control.

How to run the checklist as one test

The checklist collapses into one side-by-side programme. All the protocol figures below are working practice, not a standard: three candles per variant (two in column A), burn cycles of about 3–4 hours with full cool-down, cure checkpoints at 48 hours, 7 days and 14 days as labelled examples. Change only the wax. The table after the steps shows, for each item, how it is measured.

The safety lines — flame height, soot, mushrooming, jar heat and tunnelling — have one rule in every column: no worse than the approved control, and within your jar supplier's guidance and the candle fire-safety standard you work to (ASTM F2417 is commonly cited in the US). CSI publishes no numeric limit for any of them. A better throw never buys a hotter jar or a taller flame; the hotter-jar post explains why that trade is never worth it.

Test candles and kits by kind of change

Here is what the checklist costs in each column, for one candle and one fragrance: a 200 g candle at 8% (16 g of Gardenia, 184 g of wax) in a White Matte Glass Jar, Eco wicks, and a 5% pour-loss allowance (a working assumption). For simplicity each estimate prices the controls in the same wax as the tests; if your controls come from your existing stock, subtract that share. The new-wax examples are CSI 464 for A and B, Premium Coconut Soy Wax CSI 468 for C and Luxury Soy Wax Chunks for D.

Column B, the most common real case, is priced in detail below. It adds the two instruments the checklist needs for its readings — a Pen Thermometer and a Candle Making Weighing Scale — and assumes the three controls come from your old wax on the shelf. If you already own the instruments, the kit is ₹2,389.84.

Decision rule, release and the record

The change passes when every NEW line has a sourced answer, every REPEAT and CONFIRM line has a result no worse than control (and, where the change had a purpose, better on that line), and at least one candle has burnt to the end. If one wick fails and the other passes, the wick line changes with the wax. If both fail, stop — the right answer may be a different wax, not a different wick. If the new wax's ceiling is below your load, reformulate before anything else.

Release a small first batch, keep two candles from it as the new retained samples, and let one keep burning to the end while the rest ship. File the old card as the previous version, not an edit. The change-control form turns this into a one-page record.

Which page answers your exact change

This checklist is the summary page for the second half of the wax-change cluster. Each sibling takes one real scenario and works it through with its own test design, kit and numbers. If your change matches one of them, go there.

The first half of the cluster covers supplier-only changes, look-alike waxes and "direct replacement" claims one question at a time. The same KEEP / CONFIRM / REPEAT / NEW logic runs through the fragrance, wick and jar changes later in the series; the fragrance-change checklist is this page's counterpart for oils.

Frequently asked questions