My Supplier Says the New Wick Is Equivalent to My Discontinued Wick — What Tests Should I Complete Before Treating It as a Direct Replacement?

What "equivalent" can and cannot mean

When a wick is discontinued, the replacement usually arrives with a reassurance: same size range, same fibre, same application. The supplier may be entirely sincere, and the new wick may be very close. But "equivalent" in a catalogue usually means equivalent in intent: designed for a similar diameter range and wax type. It rarely means the new wick delivers the same flame, the same melt pool and the same end-of-life behaviour in your jar, with your fragrance at your load.

Small construction differences change combustion. A slightly different braid pattern, a different ratio of cotton to paper, a different priming wax or a different tab neck can each shift how much fuel the wick draws and how the flame sits. In one candle the difference is invisible. In another, perhaps your largest jar with your heaviest fragrance, it decides whether the candle tunnels or runs hot.

So treat the replacement as a new wick that happens to have a promising starting point. Before it becomes a direct replacement, it has to match the discontinued wick side by side in every product you make with it, all the way to the end of the candle. The good news is that you do not have to test every combination blindly. You can bracket.

Step one: gather evidence before burning anything

Start at the goods-in bench. You are building a file that compares the two wicks on paper and by eye before you spend wax on them.

If the old wick has already run out

Sometimes the discontinued wick is gone before anyone thinks to keep some back. You can still qualify the replacement, but the reference changes. Instead of a side-by-side comparison, you compare the new wick against your written records from the original approval: the flame heights, pool reach at each hour, and how the candles ended. That is weaker evidence, because conditions on the day differ, so compensate with more candles per bracket position and by burning a finished candle from old stock, if you have any unsold, beside the new test candles. A retained finished candle made with the old wick is almost as good a control as the wick itself. Next time, make holding back reference stock part of every wick purchase.

Step two: bracket your product range instead of testing everything

If you make three jar sizes with four fragrances, that is twelve combinations. Testing every one with old and new wicks, burned to the end, is twenty-four candles and many days of attended burning. Bracketing reduces that by choosing the combinations most likely to expose a difference. If the new wick matches at the extremes, the combinations in between are very likely to follow.

Four combinations with an old-wick and a new-wick candle each is eight candles, a third of the full matrix. That is a suggested starting point. If the physical comparison showed a clear difference, add a middle-size jar to the bracket. If the new wick fails any bracket position, stop and do not extrapolate; that product needs its own wick decision.

Worked example: bracketing a 120 g jar

Suppose your smallest product is a 120 g candle in the CSI shiny glass jar with lid, which costs ₹47.20 for one and is stated as 6 cm diameter on the product page. You pour it in Fully Refined Paraffin Wax Pellets at ₹354.00 per kg, and your heaviest fragrance is Dark Vanilla at ₹7,646.00 per kg, at 8% of total candle weight, the top of the paraffin range stated on its page.

At 8%, a 120 g candle needs 120 × 0.08 = 9.6 g of oil and 120 − 9.6 = 110.4 g of wax. Wax costs 0.1104 × ₹354.00 = ₹39.08. Oil costs 0.0096 × ₹7,646.00 = ₹73.40. The jar is ₹47.20. Before the wick, each test candle costs ₹39.08 + ₹73.40 + ₹47.20 = ₹159.68.

If all four bracket positions used a candle of about this cost, eight candles would come to 8 × ₹159.68 = ₹1,277.44 plus the wicks. Your larger jars will cost more, so treat that figure as the floor. Set it against the alternative: switching every product to the replacement wick on the strength of a catalogue line, then discovering in customer homes that the small paraffin jar runs hot at the end.

Note the flashpoint: Dark Vanilla's page gives approximately 191–193°C, so add the oil below that figure, as with any fragrance. Its page also states a paraffin cure of 24–48 hours; use at least that before the first lighting, and keep old-wick and new-wick candles curing together.

Step three: burn to the end and decide on evidence

Burn each pair in equal, attended sessions, record flame height, pool reach, mushrooming, soot, glass warmth near the rim and how each candle ends, and stop any test that smokes or flares. Then compare the pairs, not the individual candles.

Be honest with yourself about what passes. "Close enough" in a bracket test becomes a larger gap across a year of production and a range of customer rooms. If the replacement is genuinely equivalent, the records will show it clearly. If they show a pattern, even a mild one, accept that the wick is a new component and qualify it like one.

That includes when the replacement comes from us. A catalogue equivalence claim from CSI, or anyone else, is a reason to test, not a reason to skip testing. Keep the file: supplier answer, physical comparison, bracket plan, burn records and final decision. The next time a wick is discontinued, you will know exactly how long the process takes and what it costs.

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:

Three things to buy for this job

Frequently asked questions