My Candle Collection Has Ten Fragrances in One Jar — How Can I Efficiently Wick-Test All Ten Without Assuming One Wick Works Universally?

Wave 1: every oil on the house wick

The house wick is the one you expect to suit most of the range: in this worked example, C2 in the 150 g Clear Glass Jar. That choice is a starting point, not a claim about the jar; if your first lavender or rose already passed on C1, C1 is your house wick and the directions flip. Two candles per oil is a screen, not an approval: enough to see which way an oil leans, not enough to sign it off.

Per candle, the jar and wax alone are ₹164.42; a Jasmine screening candle comes to ₹229.06 with its oil and wick. That is why the screen uses two candles, not three: across ten oils, every extra screening candle is another jar, another 138 g of wax and another 12 g of oil, ten times over. Costs exclude labour, freight, packaging and GST.

The design behind this, filling only the neighbouring cell in the direction a candle failed rather than the whole grid, is the adaptive ten-fragrance grid post; how many sizes per fragrance to plan for is the sizes-per-fragrance calculator. This page owns the purchasing schedule that makes that method cheap.

Wave 2: only the directions that failed

The worked example's illustration (your results will differ; CSI has no burn data for any oil): Jasmine, Lavender, British Rose, Gardenia and Bergamot Amber pass on C2; Vanilla Bean, Woody Oud and Roasted Coffee ring or carbon (low); Citrus Lemon and Eucalyptus Spearmint pool fast and deep (hot). That spread is plausible because heavier, vanilla-rich, resinous and coffee oils are commonly linked to needing more wick, and light citrus and herbal oils often burn more easily, but it is an illustration of the schedule, not a forecast.

Wave 2 is ten candles: six on Cotton Braided, four on C1. The order: a Cotton Braided 10-pack (₹120.00) and a C1 20-pack (₹118.00, the 10-pack is out of stock), a jar pack of 10 (₹944.00), two 1 kg bags of wax (₹1,014.80; 240 g is left from wave 1) and a 15 g top-up of each failed oil (₹466.30). Wave 2 total: ₹2,663.10.

For the hot side, C1 is the only tabbed step down; below it there is only the untabbed loose 2-inch wick. An oil that runs hot on C1 in this jar is unusual at 8%, and if it happens, check centring and draughts before buying anything.

Wave 3: the third candle and the full life

Every oil needs three candles on one wick through the full life before it is approved. The two wave-1 candles of a passing oil keep burning; wave 3 adds one more on C2 so it has three. For an oil that failed, its two wave-2 candles on the winning rung keep burning and wave 3 adds a third on that rung. Pour the five passers' third candles as soon as wave 1 is read (they do not depend on wave 2), and the rest when wave 2 is read. Pour them early and the C2 10-pack and one jar pack simply move into order 2; the total does not change.

Approve an oil when all three of its candles reach about 1 cm left with no heat, soot or flame trouble in the final third; judge how close the flame sits to the glass by eye, never by touch. How far down a test must go is the acceptance-depth post. After wave 3 you hold 5 C2, 1 Cotton Braided, 14 C1 and 480 g of wax: a reserve for re-pours, not a mistake.

Oil grams per oil, matched to real bottles

Each candle takes 12 g. An oil that passes the screen uses 24 g in wave 1 and 12 g in wave 3: 36 g, so its 50 g bottle leaves 14 g. An oil that fails uses 24 g + 24 g + 12 g = 60 g, 10 g more than one 50 g holds; a 15 g top-up, bought with the wave-2 order, covers it and leaves 5 g. After wave 1 every bottle still holds 26 g, which already covers that oil's wave-3 candle.

Every one of the ten pages states a candle load up to 10% for soy (some as a 6–10% range), and CSI 464 states up to 10%, so 8% sits inside every ceiling. A different load for one oil is a different test; keep the screen at one load.

The rule: no wave-2 purchase before wave-1 results

It is tempting to buy C1 and Cotton Braided with wave 1 "so they are here". On the wick line alone the damage is small: a C1 20 and a Cotton Braided 10 are ₹238.00, and they will probably be used eventually. The real cost is what having them in the drawer encourages: pouring both neighbours for every oil on day one. That front-loaded route, two candles on C1, C2 and Cotton Braided for all ten plus the third candles, is 70 candles, 70 jars (₹6,608.00), 10 kg of wax (₹5,074.00), 100 g of every oil (₹4,592.32) and the wicks (₹641.20): ₹16,915.52. The staged route is ₹10,317.12 for 40 candles. The difference, ₹6,598.40, is jars, wax and oil for candles whose answer you could have predicted from wave 1.

What staging costs you is time: three orders instead of one, and your own order-to-bench time between waves (CSI dispatches from Pune and publishes no lead times; confirm on WhatsApp). If that time matters more than the money, order the wave-2 wick packs with wave 1, because they are cheap, but still do not pour or buy jars and oil for wave 2 until wave 1 is read. A fixed reference oil that brackets the range first is a different shortcut with different risks: the reference-first post. Which oil makes the best reference is the heaviest-reference post.

From ten approvals to production quantities

After wave 3, each approved oil has a wick. In the worked example that is C2 for five oils, Cotton Braided for three and C1 for two. Production follows the series formula per SKU: wicks = candles × wicks per candle × (1 + allowance), with 5% as our worked-example allowance. Because all three are flat per wick, pack sizes only change your cash outlay.

Oil per fragrance at 40 candles is 480 g a month: the 500 g of each, all in stock on 1 October 2026. Whether three wick SKUs for ten oils is worth simplifying, and how to test whether a low-volume oil can share a neighbour's wick, is the sharing-trial post; whether one odd oil deserves its own wick at all is the extra-SKU post. Per-SKU reorder points at higher volumes are the 500-candles-a-month post.

What to buy, and what to skip

Five items, in wave order, chosen on page statements, price and stock on 1 October 2026. CSI publishes no wick-performance data, so nothing here is ranked on burn results. Oil candle counts use 12 g per 150 g candle at 8%.

Skip for this schedule: 100 g bottles for every oil, the 5 kg or 10 kg of wax (flat per gram, so nothing is saved by buying ahead), Performance Wooden Wicks (one listing, no widths, so no rung to step to), and a Steel Wick Holder (a single wick per jar here; the ₹118.00 Wick Centering Device pack of 5 does the job).

Frequently asked questions