Some New Candle Jars Have Small Chips Around the Rim — Should Damaged Pieces Be Automatically Removed From Production?

Yes: a chipped jar is removed from candle production, every time

This is one of the few goods-in questions with a flat answer. A jar with a chip anywhere on it, however small, does not go into candle production. Not after a second look, not for a trial batch, not for a friends-and-family order, and not because the chip is on the side that will face the wall. The jar is taken out, counted, photographed and kept apart from good stock.

The reasoning is straightforward. A chip is a break in the glass surface, and breaks are where cracks begin when glass is stressed. A burning candle heats the jar unevenly, from the melt pool outwards and from the top down, and a chip at the rim sits exactly where the glass is thinnest and the temperature changes fastest. Add the sharp edge a customer's fingers will meet when lifting the lid or relighting the wick, and there is no version of a chipped jar that belongs in a candle.

Where chips hide and how to find them

Rim chips are the obvious ones, but chips also appear on the heel of the base, on the shoulder of jars with a narrowing neck, and on the threads or lug ring of jars with screw or lug caps. Some are clean small flakes; others are shallow crescent-shaped marks called shell or conchoidal chips, which catch the light differently from the surrounding glass. A bruise, where the surface is crushed but nothing has come away yet, counts as a chip for goods-in purposes.

Lids deserve a glance at the same time. A chip on the rim of a lidded jar can stop the lid seating evenly, and a lid that rocks or leaves a gap is often the first sign of a rim defect you had not spotted. Fit the lid on any jar you are unsure about. If it sits unevenly on an otherwise good-looking rim, look again at that rim with the side light before deciding the jar is sound.

Worked example: why removal is always the cheaper option

Suppose you receive 40 of the 150 g apothecary jars with golden lids, bought as two packs of 20 at ₹1,888.00 each, so ₹3,776.00 in total and ₹94.40 per jar (₹1,888.00 ÷ 20). At goods-in you find 3 with rim chips.

Removing those three costs 3 × ₹94.40 = ₹283.20 of glass. Now compare that with what you lose if a chipped jar is poured and then fails the final inspection or reaches a customer. The table works out the material value of one finished 150 g candle at 8% fragrance of total weight.

A chipped jar caught at goods-in costs ₹94.40. The same jar caught after pouring costs ₹253.45 in materials plus your labour and cure time, and one that reaches a customer can cost you far more in refunds, replacements and trust. The arithmetic points one way, and it points there before the safety argument is even considered.

Recording chips and raising them with the supplier

The record you keep does two jobs: it supports a claim with the supplier, and it tells you whether the damage is happening in transit, at the glassworks or in your own workshop.

Photograph the outer carton before you open it, then the chipped jars in the carton where you found them, then each chip close up. That sequence is the evidence a supplier needs. For CSI orders, send the photographs and count on WhatsApp (+91 7397976926) and keep the reply with the record. CSI does not publish a defect allowance for jars, so the discussion is about what arrived, not a stated tolerance.

When a few chips become a shipment problem

A small number of chipped jars in a large order is not unusual with glass, and it is not by itself a reason to refuse the rest. The rest are safe to use once each jar has passed inspection. What deserves escalation is a pattern.

As a suggested starting point, escalate when more than about 2% of a shipment is chipped, when most of the chips cluster in one carton, or when the same jar style arrives chipped in the same place order after order. Those patterns point to packing or production, and the supplier can often fix them with better dividers or a change in how the jars are packed. Adjust the 2% threshold once you have a few shipments of history.

When you report a cluster, suggest the fix rather than only the fault. Asking for rim-to-rim contact to be prevented with dividers, or for heavier jars to be packed in fewer layers, gives the supplier something concrete to change, and gives you a way to judge the next delivery against the promise.

One more thing to settle in advance: what happens to the removed jars. Wrap them in paper or cardboard, mark the package as broken glass, and dispose of it so nobody is cut. Do not keep a box of chipped jars in the workshop for some later use; sooner or later one ends up on the pouring bench.

The standard to hold yourself to is the same whoever supplied the jars, including us. A chipped jar from a trusted supplier is exactly as unsafe as one from a new source, and a supplier worth working with would rather hear about it than have it poured.

Where this page fits

CSI already has guides that cover parts of this question. This page covers the goods-in check for the question above; these go deeper on the rest:

Three things to buy for this job

Frequently asked questions