Why a load change reopens the wick question

You fixed the sweating. The batch was remelted, unscented wax was added, and the load came down from 10% to 8% of the candle. Same jar, same wax, same oil. It is tempting to treat the wick as settled, since nothing about the jar changed. The trouble is that the wick does not burn the jar. It burns what is in it.

Fragrance oil is part of that fuel. A 200 g candle at 10% held 20 g of oil in 180 g of wax; at 8% it holds 16 g in 184 g. The wick is now drawing a mixture with less oil and more wax. How that changes the burn depends on the oil and wax, and no general rule tells you in advance which way it will go. Some candles burn almost identically. Others form the melt pool more slowly, or the flame and soot behave differently, or a jar that ran hot near the bottom now runs cooler.

CSI publishes no wick sizing chart, flame height, burn rate or melt-pool diameter for any wick, and no burn-time figure for finished candles. That is not a gap you can fill from a table. It is filled by burning your candle.

Bracket the answer instead of restarting

A complete wick search tests every plausible size from scratch. You do not need that. You already know the wick that suited this jar and wax at 10%, so the answer at 8% is almost certainly that wick or one step away from it. Bracketing tests exactly those options.

CSI does not sell a numbered wick ladder, so the steps are fewer and larger than in some ranges. The honest map is Eco C1 (thin), Eco C2 (thick), Cotton Braided Wicks Ready Made (positioned on its page for candles wider than 8 cm), two wicks in one jar as a configuration, and Performance Wooden Wicks as a different construction. If the right wick falls between C1 and C2, the range may not contain it, and the answer may be a configuration or a small change in jar or load instead.

Example: a 7 cm matte jar

Take an illustrative case. A maker pours 200 g candles in CSI's 200 ml matte glass jars, which the page describes as about 7 cm wide and 8 cm tall. The melt surface of a 7 cm jar is roughly π × 3.5² ≈ 38.5 cm², though the internal diameter is a little less than the outer width. At 10% in CSI 464 with Lavender, Eco C2 was approved. After the rework to 8%, the bracket is:

Samples for that bracket cost an Eco C1 20-pack at ₹118.00 plus an Eco C2 10-pack at ₹94.40: ₹118.00 + ₹94.40 = ₹212.40. Ready-made braided wicks are positioned for candles wider than 8 cm, so for a 7 cm jar they are a later option, not part of the first bracket.

What to record, burn by burn

Pour all eight candles from the same diluted wax on the same day, cure them for at least the oil page's stated minimum, and burn them in the same draught-free room. Session lengths and checkpoints below are suggested starting points; keep them the same for every candle.

Never leave a test burn unattended, keep the candles away from draughts and anything flammable, and let the glass cool fully between sessions.

Reading the bracket

Notice that none of the outcomes is 'put the oil back to 10%'. The candle was reworked because 10% sweated. A wick problem at 8% is solved with the wick or the jar, not by restoring the load that failed.

What the retest costs against a second rework

The bracket test uses wax you already have: the eight test candles are poured from the diluted batch itself, so no new wax or oil is bought. The new spend is small. The two wick packs cost ₹212.40. If you do not reuse cleaned jars from the original batch, one pack of ten matte jars is ₹708.00, so the outlay is ₹212.40 + ₹708.00 = ₹920.40, excluding shipping and GST. Two of those ten jars are spares for a repeat if one test candle is spoiled.

Set that beside the alternative. A batch of 250 candles poured with a wick that turns out to run hot near the bottom cannot be sold, and recovering it means releasing the wax from 250 jars, discarding 250 wicks and starting the cure again. The arithmetic of the rework was correct; it is the untested wick that would sink it.

Time is the real cost: cure plus burn-down takes days, not hours. Plan the order date around it, and tell the customer early if the corrected batch needs the extra week rather than shipping a candle that has only passed half its test.

How complete does the testing need to be?

Complete enough to cover the whole life of the candle, for every wick option you might use, in the jar and load you will sell. That is less than a full wick search, but more than one evening's burn.

Keep one candle of the winning option back from the burn test for a storage check, in normal conditions and in your own supervised warm room or cabinet if you sell into hot regions. The point of the rework was a dry candle; the wick test confirms the candle burns, and the storage check confirms it stays fixed.

Then write the result down as a formula specification: wax, oil, load on its stated basis, jar, wick, cure and the date the combination was approved. The next time anyone changes the load, the specification will make the need for a wick retest obvious.

Where this page fits

CSI already has guides that cover parts of this question. This page answers one sweating decision; these cover the neighbouring questions:

Three things to buy for this fix

Frequently asked questions