I’m Using an 8.5 cm Jar with 8% Lavender — How Do I Decide Whether One Larger Wick or Two Smaller Wicks Is the Better Configuration?

The results a scorecard needs

This page assumes you have, or will make, one set of results: three candles on one Cotton Braided and three on two Eco C1, same Lavender at 8% of total weight, same CSI 464 (or your soy), same 250 g fill, jar batch, pour, cure and room, burned in 3–4 hour sessions to about 1 cm left. How to set up that head-to-head and log soot, flame and edge fairly is the 8.5 cm head-to-head post; why a thick ring points you there is the 8.5–9 cm hub. This page picks up where those end, with six candles' worth of numbers and a choice to make.

Your jar is your own: CSI lists no 8.5 cm jar. On an assumed 0.35 cm wall it is 7.8 cm inside, a 47.78 cm² pool, and each wick of a pair serves about 23.89 cm². Measure the inside at two or three heights; the scorecard compares configurations in your jar and doesn't transfer to another diameter.

Costs are worked examples and exclude labour, freight, packaging and GST. CSI 464's page states "Pour Temperature 80°C – 90°C"; your jar has no CSI heat wording, so pour at the low end into clean, evenly warmed jars (our judgement). The Lavender page states no cure time in the text we captured; the 25 of 102 CSI oil pages that do say 48–72 hours for soy, and many makers wait about a week.

Gates first: what must pass before anything is scored

Some results are not "a low score"; they end the configuration. We put them in front of the scorecard so no weighting can outvote them. The list is our judgement and deliberately short, because each item is something you can see without guessing at temperatures.

Notice what is not a gate: a first-burn ring, a flame at 5.5 cm for a session, a wick that needs trimming. Those are scored. Glass is observed, never touched; CSI lists no non-contact thermometer, so if you want numbers, you will need one from elsewhere, and there is no CSI figure to compare them with. The 85°C wording on some CSI jar pages is a pour limit, not a burn rating. How pair spacing changes glass heat is the wall-gap post.

Six criteria, weighted before you look

Six criteria cover what separates one larger wick from two smaller ones in a jar like yours. Three are about the burn, one about late-life heat, two about production. The weights are ours and meant to be argued with; what matters is that you fix yours first. We show three sets because the honest answer to "which is better?" depends on who is making the candle.

Balanced is our default for a maker selling in small batches. Production is for a bench pouring hundreds a week, where a minute per candle is a shift a month. Studio is for someone pouring a few dozen by hand, for whom a calmer late burn matters more than an extra minute at the bench. None of them lets a configuration that failed a gate back in.

Turning results into points

Each criterion gets 0–5 from a written anchor, so two people scoring the same log get the same number. Score each configuration on its worst candle for flame, soot and heat, and on its mean for edge reach. The anchors below are our judgement, built on the log format in the head-to-head post.

The last row is nearly always a 5 for both at CSI prices: one Cotton Braided is ₹12.00, two C1 are ₹11.80, a difference of ₹0.20. That is why the ₹ weight is only 10, and why the labour row, not the wick row, is where production money shows up.

Timing the wicks: the line most scorecards leave out

Fixing a single wick is one tab on a centre mark and one holder. Fixing a pair is two tabs on two marks the right distance apart, a holder that has to line up with both, a check after pouring that neither wick has drifted, and sometimes a nudge while the wax is soft. None of that shows up in a wick price. Time it the way you will really work.

In this example the pair saves ₹0.20 a candle in wicks and costs ₹4.50 more in fixing, so the paired candle is ₹4.30 dearer all in. Over 500 candles that is ₹2,250.00 of extra fixing against ₹100.00 of wick saving. There is a one-off bench cost too: 25 Steel Wick Holders are ₹1,250.00 against ₹590.00 for 25 Wick Centering Devices for singles, ₹660.00 more, once. Your minutes and rate will differ; the shape of the sum usually doesn't.

The worked example, scored three ways

The results below are illustrative, built to show how the scorecard behaves when both configurations are safe, which can happen with a light herbal like Lavender at 8%. Both passed every gate: no soot above grade 1, no flame on the glass, no drowning, no late pool beyond about 2 cm.

Read the three lines together. The pair burns calmer and cleaner; the single reaches the glass sooner and is quicker to make. Neither is "right" for an 8.5 cm jar; each is right for a maker who values what the weights say. That is the whole point of scoring results rather than diameters, and it is why you choose the weights first. If you catch yourself changing weights after seeing the totals, go back to the balanced set.

Two limits on this page. It compares two configurations; whether a jar needs three wicks is the 2-versus-3 post. And it decides for one oil. If your range splits, Lavender on a single and a vanilla on a pair in the same jar, the production plan for two builds is the split production plan, and the single-vs-pair spacing starting points are in the 9 cm placement post. The general single-vs-double trade-offs for large jars are in the huge-single-wick-soot post.

What to buy, and what to skip

Five items, chosen on page statements, price and stock on 29 September 2026. CSI publishes no wick-performance data, so nothing is ranked on burn results. Oil candle counts use the 250 g worked-example fill (20 g each) and the standard 150 g candle (12 g each).

Frequently asked questions