My Candle Never Reaches the Jar Edge Even After Repeated Burns — What Evidence Would Indicate I Should Test the Next Wick Size Up?

The release threshold, condition by condition

Each condition below rules out a cause that isn't the wick. If one fails, the purchase isn't released. That isn't because the wick is fine; it's because you don't yet know. The thresholds are our judgement, labelled, and readable with a ruler and a photo.

In the worked example, the three Cotton Braided candles in an 8.0 cm inside jar log rings of 6, 5 and 5 mm (A), 7, 6 and 6 mm (B) and 6, 5 and 5 mm (C). A 5 mm ring in this jar leaves 23.4% of the surface unmelted, and 6 mm leaves 27.8%. That is wax the customer pays for and never smells. Every condition holds, so the purchase is released.

Two neighbouring cases look similar but don't release anything. A candle that reaches the glass only near the four-hour mark but burns cleanly is a session-length question, not automatically an undersized wick; the 8 cm nearly-four-hours post sets out how to judge it against how long customers actually burn. And a wide jar whose ring is shrinking slowly, burn over burn, belongs to a continue-or-change gate rather than a purchase; the 10 cm four-hours post lays that gate out, including running the next rung in parallel. This page owns what you buy once the evidence is in.

The next-rung order, by the wick you are on now

CSI's sized, tabbed rungs run C1 → C2 → Cotton Braided, with no size in between and none above. So the purchase that the threshold releases is one of three orders. All are costed at the worked example's 200 g fill (16 g Gilli Mitti + 184 g CSI 464, load as a percentage of total weight) and exclude your jars.

Across every row, the wick is the cheap part. A two-C2 candle in this worked example is ₹255.60 in materials before the jar, and 56.1% of that is the Gilli Mitti. So when you size up, the real cost is the candles you pour around the new wick. Keep the counts tight.

Why six of the next rung: confirm three, replicate three

The first three candles of the new rung are poured beside the evidence: same wax lot, same oil bottle, same jar batch. They are screened at burn 3 and, if they lead, burned to about 1 cm left. That is the full-life gate in the series approval rule. The second three come from a separate pour on another day, burned the same way. Our reasoning, labelled as judgement: a wick approved on one pour has only been tested against that pour's temperature, mixing and jar lot. A second pour costs three candles and catches the batch that would otherwise surprise you in production.

That is why the count is six, and why the smallest pack still covers it. A C2 10-pack holds six with four spare; so does a Cotton Braided 10-pack. With CSI's flat per-wick pricing, there is nothing to gain from a bigger pack and a shelf to fill if the step fails.

Already on Cotton Braided: the double-arm order

Cotton Braided's page describes it for candles "exceeding 8 cm". An 8.0 cm inside jar is right on that line, so a ring on Cotton Braided here isn't a contradiction; it's the boundary. Above Cotton Braided, CSI lists unsized cut-to-length braid (the Braided Wick Roll and Eco Braided Wicks) and one wooden wick with no widths. None of those is a known step up; they are different constructions, which belong in a type-swap test (the tall-flame type-swap post). The known step up is a pair.

Why two arms rather than one? Two C1 and two C2 bracket the double-wick answer from both sides. Two C1 might be too little heat, and two C2 too much, in a jar where one Cotton Braided was just short. Testing both in one pour finds the pair that sits between them, with a documented fail on at least one side. The geometry, which is arithmetic rather than a burn prediction:

Two C1 cost ₹0.20 less per candle than one Cotton Braided; two C2 cost ₹6.88 more. The spacing is where pairs most often go wrong, and it is a method in its own right: the double-wick spacing post covers it, and the 8.5 cm double-arm post weighs one bigger wick against two smaller ones at the design stage. The 9 cm case, where a single wick falls just short, has its own after-failure list in the 9 cm pairs-and-braid post. Here the point is the order: two packs and a set of holders.

Holders. Each double jar needs its pair held upright until the wax sets, so the holder count is the number of double jars you pour at once. Six jars poured together means six holders: a Steel Wick Holder pack of 10 (₹500.00), or a pack of 5 (₹250.00) plus two sticks and tape for the sixth. The page says the holder fits jars "up to 9 cm wide"; your jar is about 8.7 cm outside on our wall assumption. Its three holes are in a line and their spacing isn't stated, so measure before you rely on them. How many holders production needs is the fixture-count post.

The double-arm bill: candles, grams, rupees

From nothing, the double arm costs ₹3,071.20 in cash (wick packs, ten holders, 150 g of oil, 2 kg of wax), or ₹712.40 if you already have the oil and wax. With five holders and an improvised sixth, the wick-and-holder part drops to ₹462.40. Every figure excludes your jars, labour, freight, packaging and GST.

After approval: what a pair costs in production

When all six candles of one pair pass the full life, size the order from your production: wicks to buy = candles × wicks per candle × (1 + allowance). With two wicks per candle, the count doubles. The 5% allowance is our worked-example figure.

Reorder point = daily use × your lead time + safety stock. At 252 wicks a month, about 8.4 a day; with a 7-day lead time and five days of safety stock (your figures; CSI publishes no lead times or stock depth), reorder at about 101 wicks. Count in wicks, not candles: running out of the second wick stops a double-wick line just as surely as running out of the first.

Going from one large wick to two smaller ones on a product you already sell is a change, and it needs more than a melt-pool check: heat, soot and burn time all move. The one-large-to-two-small change-control post lists what to revalidate. If the pair later runs deep, the double-wick deep-pool post covers the retest buy.

Wicks, holder, oil and wax for the size-up 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.

Skip for this order: Performance Wooden Wicks (₹590.00 for 10), one listing with no widths, so not a size step; the Eco Candle Wicks Loose, whose page describes it for "2 inch diameters", far below this jar; and the Bamboo Wick Holder (₹118.00 for 5) for the pairs, because its page, in the text we captured, describes holding "your wick" and says nothing about two-wick layouts or jar sizes.

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