I Want to Compare Five Fragrance Oils but Only Have 2 Kg of Soy Wax — How Should I Divide the Wax Into Meaningful Test Batches?

Why 2 kg ÷ 5 is the wrong division

Dividing the wax equally feels fair, and fairness is the wrong goal. A test batch is not a ration to be shared out; it is a set of experimental cells, and a cell either produces a usable result or it does not. Four hundred grams of wax is 2.9 jars at 150 g — so in practice the even division collapses into an uneven one the moment you start pouring. Two oils get three jars, three oils get two, and the two oils that happened to get three are now being judged on a different amount of evidence from the others. That asymmetry is invisible in your notes and decisive in your conclusions.

The deeper problem is what an even division leaves out. If every gram is allocated to the screen, there is nothing left to act on the screen's result with. And the result of a five-oil screen is almost never "oil three is the winner, launch it". It is usually one of three things: two oils are close and need separating; one oil is promising but its candle under-performed for a reason that looks mechanical; or all five were flat, which points at a shared cause. Every one of those outcomes needs wax you have not spent yet.

One practical note on where the two kilos come from. Eco Soy CSI 400 is listed at ₹399 for 1 kg and ₹1,996 for 5 kg, which works out at ₹399 and ₹399.20 a kilo respectively — effectively flat, so two 1 kg packs at ₹798 cost no more per kilo than the 5 kg bag. That matters here: there is no per-kilo penalty for buying exactly the two kilos this plan needs, and no reward for buying three times as much before a single jar has been burned.

The smallest cell that can be believed

The unit of a fragrance screen is the cell, and a cell is defined by what it lets you do afterwards. Below is what each cell size buys, so you can see exactly why two is the floor and three is the ambition.

Read the last row carefully, because it is the plan's logic in one line. Four jars per oil is the right cell size — for finalists. That is precisely what the reserve is: four jars for the one or two oils that survive the screen. So the 10 + 4 split is not a compromise between two and four jars per oil. It is two jars for five candidates and four jars for the winner, spent in that order because the screen is what identifies who deserves the four.

The 10 + 4 split, gram by gram

Here is the whole plan as numbers, with what each oil's own page states next to it. Load is 8% of finished candle weight throughout — this series' convention — so every jar is 138 g of wax and 12 g of oil, whichever bottle the 12 g came from.

Two of the five pages also state no fragrance load, which is worth naming rather than glossing over. Citronella's page gives a flash point and no percentage; Chocolate Fudge gives a percentage and no flash point. An oil with no published ceiling stays at 8% for this screen and never becomes the one you push upward later — that experiment belongs to an oil whose page tells you where the top is. Note also that British Rose's page suggests starting at 10%; running it at 8% alongside the others is still correct here, because comparability across the ten jars matters more than each oil's own suggested starting point. If British Rose wins, the reserve round is where you try it at 10%.

15 gm or 50 gm: what a repeatable cell costs

This is the sharpest cost decision in the whole plan, so here it is in full. A 150 g jar at 8% needs 12 g of oil. A 15 gm bottle therefore covers exactly one jar, with 3 g left over. A 50 gm bottle covers four jars, so it comfortably carries a two-jar cell with 26 g spare for the reserve round. The table prices both routes for all five oils.

The difference is ₹913.32, and that figure is worth staring at, because it is the price of a result you can act on. The 15 gm route gives you five candles that each exist once: you cannot burn one at day 7 and another at day 14, you cannot re-burn the surprising one, and if a jar tunnels you cannot tell whether the oil or the pour was at fault. The 50 gm route gives you five cells and enough oil left over to run the reserve round without reordering. Put differently, ₹913.32 buys the ability to repeat — and repeatability, not scent selection, is what actually separates a hobby from a product.

What to buy for a five-oil screen

Three items define the screen, and all three are chosen for being cheap to standardise on. Each card lists every pack size, the per-kilo or per-piece price, and how many 150 g jars at 8% each pack covers.

The costed screen, and the reserve round

Two orders, in sequence. The first is the screen and it is the only one you commit to now. The second is smaller than people expect, because the wax and most of the oil are already on your shelf.

The reserve round is the cheapest meaningful pour in this whole plan: ₹944 of jars and nothing else, because the 552 g of wax, the 48 g of oil, the wicks and the stickers are all already paid for. Per jar, the screen costs ₹206.34 of materials; a reserve jar adds only the jar and the wick, which is ₹100.30, because its 138 g of wax and 12 g of oil were bought in order one. That asymmetry is the reward for holding something back.

Running ten jars, then four

One pour session for the screen, one for the reserve. The sequence below keeps the ten screen jars comparable and keeps the reserve genuinely uncommitted until there is a result to spend it on.

Frequently asked questions