I Have 100 Candles That Started Sweating Before Dispatch — How Do I Decide Whether They Can Be Corrected or Should Be Rejected?

Hold the lot and grade every unit

The instinct with a sweating lot is to treat it as one thing: ship it, fix it or bin it. But sweating is rarely uniform. Some units are oily, some filmed, many clean, and the difference between them is information. Grading turns a vague problem into counts, and counts into money.

Use the cluster's 0–3 surface score from the cycling-protocol post (0 none, 1 film, 2 droplets, 3 pooling) and add the places oil shouldn't be. Lids off, raking light from a phone torch, every unit numbered in pour order if you recorded it. If you're unsure whether a sheen is oil, press kitchen paper flat on it: a translucent mark is oil (the hub's blot-and-look).

The 55 / 30 / 15 split is a worked example so the ₹ figures have something to multiply; your counts replace it. How to tell oil at the base from wet spots on the glass is covered in the oil-at-the-bottom post; oil around the wick only is 3225's subject. Both change the grade, so check before you count.

Where the sweating units sit tells you why

Root cause comes before rework because every correction option (holding, topping up, remelting, even melts) inherits the cause. The full one-variable checklist is 3233; for a lot, the fastest first pass is to see where the Cs are.

In the worked example the lot is Autumn at 10% of total weight in CSI 464: 15 g of oil and 135 g of wax per candle, which is 11.11% of the wax weight. The page states "Recommended fragrance load 7-11% for candles", and the two-ceilings rule caps it at CSI 464's "Fragrance Load Up to 10%"; read conservatively as % of wax, that ceiling is 9.09% of total. Row 1 is therefore the prime suspect, and it matters for disposition: if the formula is at the edge, even grade A units share the thin margin.

The lot-disposition procedure

The burn sample uses three candles, ₹750.66 of materials in the worked example. It is worth it: a lot you ship on the strength of the surface alone could burn badly, and a lot you reject on the strength of the surface alone might have been sound. Costs exclude labour, freight, packaging and GST.

Options by grade, and the ₹ at stake

A top-up is mostly cosmetic

Pouring a thin layer of unscented CSI 464 over a B unit (at 80–85°C in this jar, whose page states "Safe for hot pour up to 85°C") gives it a fresh, dry top. It doesn't change the oil in the candle below, the hot layer remelts part of the surface it lands on, and the first burn is through unscented wax. It also adds weight: a 150 g candle with a 10 g top-up is 160 g, which matters for your label and for headspace (a gap of roughly 1–1.5 cm below the rim is a common rule of thumb). Net-quantity labelling falls under the Legal Metrology (Packaged Commodities) Rules; check current requirements (not legal advice). In our judgement, use a top-up only on units that stay clean through the hold, and then ask whether you needed it at all.

Wax melts: salvage, not a disguise

Grade C wax, scraped out cold, is still wax and oil. Remelted and poured into melt containers, it becomes a product that is heated in a warmer rather than burned on a wick. Autumn's page gives "9-13% for wax melts", so a 10% wax sits inside the oil page's melt figure; no CSI wax page states a melt ceiling. Fifteen C units hold up to 2,250 g if you recover everything. The containers' capacity isn't stated in the text we captured; at a worked-example 60 g per container that is 37 containers. Melts from a wax that sweated as candles can sweat too, so give them the same day 1, 3 and 7 surface checks and a melt test in a warmer before you list them.

Orders due while the lot is on hold

A lot that was meant for dispatch usually has orders against it. Grading and a 7-day hold mean those orders wait, and the temptation is to fill the most urgent ones from the units that look best today. The table is our judgement on how to handle that without shipping a problem.

Replacements take longer than a hold: a pour, a cure (Autumn's page states no cure time in the text we captured; many makers cure soy a week or more before selling, which is common practice) and at least a day 1, 3 and 7 surface check. Build that into the date you give the customer, and keep a disposition log: unit number, grade, recheck results, what happened to it (shipped, reworked, melted, rejected) and the order it filled. The log is what lets you answer a complaint months later.

What not to do with a sweating lot

The standard for whether a unit that sweated and recovered is fit to sell belongs to the summer-versus-AC sellability post; this page only decides what to do with the lot you have. In our judgement, don't sell visibly sweating candles without testing, and don't let a deadline turn a hold into a shipment.

Products for disposition and salvage

Four products: the salvage containers, the wax for a pilot or replacements, a burner to melt-test salvaged melts, and the worked example's oil. Chosen on page statements, price and stock on 26 September 2026; CSI has no stability data, so nothing is ranked on performance.

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