Some Wick Tabs Are Loose and the Wick Moves Inside Them — Can This Create Problems Once the Candle Reaches the Bottom?

What happens when the pool reaches a loose tab

Picture a container candle burning well. The melt pool widens, deepens and moves down the jar session by session. All that time, the lower part of the wick is locked in solid wax. Even if the crimp at the tab is slack, the braid cannot move, because the wax is holding it.

Near the end, the pool reaches the tab. Now the braid is standing in liquid wax, held only by the crimp. If that crimp is firm, the wick stays upright and centred, and the neck does its job of starving the flame as the last wax is used. If the crimp is slack, several things can happen, and none of them are good.

Any of these can turn a well-made candle into a complaint in its final session. The tilt towards the glass is the most concerning, because the flame is closest to the base and the glass is already warm.

Loose in the tab, or loose on the floor?

Makers sometimes use the phrase loose tab for two different problems. One is a braid that moves inside its crimp, which is what this page is about and what you can check at goods-in. The other is a tab that is firmly crimped but not properly stuck to the jar floor, which is a setting problem in your own workshop. The two can look alike in a finished candle that failed at the end, so it is worth ruling out the setting side too: check that your stickers or glue hold the tab flat on a clean, dry floor, and that jars are at room temperature when you set them.

Why crimps come out slack

A crimp is a small metal collar squeezed around the braid. If the tabbing machine was set with too little pressure, if the braid in that run was slightly thinner than the collar was sized for, or if the priming wax inside the crimp later shrank or crumbled, the grip can be weaker than intended. Rough handling in transit can also open a crimp a little. You cannot tell which of these happened from the bench, and you do not need to. Your job is to find the movers; the supplier's job is to work out why.

Classifying loose tabs at goods-in

Not every bit of movement is equal. A braid that can be turned slightly in its crimp but will not slide up or down is behaving differently from one that slips out when you tug it. It helps to classify defects so your team makes the same decision every time.

These classes are suggestions, not a standard. Adjust them once you have seen how your own jars respond, but write down whatever you decide so it is applied consistently.

The goods-in pull check

Rework or replace?

It is tempting to fix loose crimps with a pair of pliers. Sometimes that works. But re-crimping changes the part: you may flatten the braid, cut into it, or leave the crimp tight in one place and loose in another. A re-crimped wick is a reworked component, and reworked components need their own proof.

If you want to rework, write down the method, the tool and how much pressure you use, then make a few candles with reworked pieces and burn them to the end beside candles with firm originals. Only if the reworked ones finish as cleanly should you release them, and even then keep them labelled as reworked on your batch sheet.

Tabbing your own replacements is also a form of making the part yourself, so the same discipline applies. Crimp with one tool, apply the same pull check to every piece you make, and burn a few to the end before they go into a production run. The advantage is that you see every crimp as it is made, rather than finding out about a slack one in a customer's final session.

Worked example: 60 loose pieces in a 1,000-wick carton

Your 80-piece sample finds five slack crimps across three packets, so you check the full carton. The result: 928 firm, 12 that rotate but will not slide, and 60 that slide or pull free.

You decide not to rework the 60 and instead to replace them by tabbing your own from CSI's braided wick roll, which comes with 100 tabs for ₹706.82. That works out at ₹706.82 ÷ 100 = ₹7.07 per tab with its share of braid (rounded), and the roll's 61 metres give about 61 cm of braid per tab. Replacing the 60 costs roughly 60 × ₹7.07 = ₹424.20, and you still have 40 tabs left over for testing.

The 12 rotating pieces stay in a labelled bag until a burn-to-end comparison decides whether they can be used. The 60 sliding pieces are bagged, photographed and kept for the supplier conversation rather than thrown away.

Talking to the supplier and releasing the rest

Send the supplier your counts, a short video or photos of a braid sliding in its crimp, and the invoice reference. A slack crimp is a tabbing fault, and a clear report is the fastest route to a replacement or a credit. If the wicks were bought from CSI, message us on WhatsApp (+91 7397976926) with the same evidence; a crimp that fails your pull check fails it whoever made it.

Release the firm pieces with the lot reference carried onto your batch sheets. And remember why this matters: never leave a burning candle unattended, and take any test jar that shows a chip or crack out of production.

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