I Have a 7 cm Diameter Glass Jar with Soy Wax — How Many Adjacent Wick Sizes Should I Test Before Choosing One for Production?

The stage-1 order for a 7 cm jar

The worked example pours 150 g candles at 8% Jasmine (12 g of oil + 138 g of wax, load as a percentage of total candle weight, CSI's convention) in CSI's Clear Glass Jar with Golden Lid. If your 7 cm jar is from elsewhere, swap the jar line for yours and weigh your own fill line. Each line below is the smallest in-stock pack that covers stage 1 plus one three-candle re-pour of any rung; the one exception is the jars, where the pack of 10 leaves a single spare.

Stage 1 from nothing: ₹3,187.20. If you already own wax, oil and jars, it is the three wick packs, ₹332.40. Materials actually consumed by the nine candles come to ₹2,026.21 (jars included); the rest is the re-pour reserve and spare stock.

Why 100 g + 50 g of Jasmine and not the cheapest fit: 100 g + 15 g (₹533.00) covers the nine candles with 7 g to spare, which is not enough to re-pour a rung if one candle splits from the other two. The extra ₹127.00 buys 42 g: a full three-candle re-pour (36 g). Two 1 kg bags of wax do the same job for CSI 464: 758 g left, enough for one re-pour of 414 g.

What "adjacent sizes" means with three rungs

The method is not ours to rewrite: the bracket-closure post sets it out. You choose a wick only when the rung below it has a documented under-wicked fail and the rung above has a documented over-wicked fail, three candles per rung. How to pick the first three rungs for a straight-sided jar is in the first-three-wicks post. This page owns what that rule means for your order when the range is short.

CSI's tabbed, ready-to-use wicks are Eco C1, Eco C2 and Cotton Braided Wicks Ready Made. There is no sized, tabbed wick between C1 and C2, none between C2 and Cotton Braided, and none smaller than C1. So for a 7 cm jar whose likely answer is C1 or C2, "the chosen wick plus one size either side" is all three rungs. You cannot buy fewer and still close the bracket, and there is nothing in between to buy more of.

Why we expect C1 or C2 at 7 cm

Pool area is π × r² on the inside diameter: geometry, not a burn prediction. A true 7.0 cm inside is 38.48 cm². CSI's 150 g jar, 7 cm outside, is about 6.3 cm inside at the rim on our 0.35 cm wall assumption: 31.17 cm². Read a 7 cm outer figure as an inside diameter and you overstate the pool by 23%. Cotton Braided's page places it at "exceeding 8 cm" (50.27 cm² at 8 cm inside, the 5501 case), well above either figure. That is why our likely centre is one rung lower than the hub's: our judgement, not a verdict. A very rough rule of thumb (about one hour per 2.5 cm of width) puts a full first pool at about 2.8 hours, so test in sessions of at least three hours.

Pack coverage: one C1 20-pack, both stages

Because the C1 10-pack is out of stock on 1 October 2026, the 20-pack is the entry point, and it turns out to be the right size: three for the stage-1 rung, six for a 2 × C1 arm, three for one re-pour, with 8 still spare even then. The two 10-packs cover their rungs plus a re-pour. In the worst case we plan for, a re-pour of the 2 × C1 arm itself, C1 still has 5 left.

Why a 2 × C1 arm and not 2 × C2 at 7 cm? On 38.48 cm², two wicks each have 19.24 cm² to melt; two C1s are the gentlest pair CSI's packs make, and the arm's purpose is to show what lies above Cotton Braided, which at 7 cm is usually too much heat. A starting spacing of 3.0 cm puts each wick 2.0 cm from the wall in a 7.0 cm inside jar: geometry and a labelled starting point. A pair in a 7 cm jar is a test arm, rarely a product; how to place two wicks is the double-wick spacing post.

Stage by stage: when to spend, and how much

You can buy both stages at once or as needed. Upfront (jars 20, two 100 g bottles of Jasmine, 2.5 kg of wax, the steel holders) costs ₹4,841.20 and ties up ₹1,654.00 more than stage 1 alone, money that sits idle if the three rungs close the bracket, which our judgement expects at 7 cm. Buying as needed costs ₹3,187.20 now and ₹1,684.00 later only if the bracket stays open: ₹4,871.20 in all, ₹30.00 more than upfront because the smaller bottles cost more per gram. Unless a deadline means you cannot wait for burn 3, stage it.

Per candle, jar included: C1 ₹221.92, C2 ₹225.46, Cotton Braided ₹228.02, 2 × C1 ₹227.82. The wick is 4.2% of a C2 candle; the jar, oil and wax are the rest. Every figure excludes labour, freight, packaging and GST.

How many days that final burn takes for a 150 g candle in a 7 cm jar is the 7 cm full-life calendar; how far down a test candle must go to count is the acceptance-depth post.

The stop-buying rule

Once a rung fails in the expected direction (C1 tunnels with a ring that never closes, Cotton Braided runs a tall flame and a deep pool) it is never reordered for this jar, wax, oil and load. Its spare wicks stay on the shelf for a future, different configuration. The only wick you ever buy in quantity is the one with a documented fail on each side, and only after its full life.

The rule saves more money in production than in testing. Suppose a 7 cm Jasmine line runs at C2: the C1 and Cotton Braided spares from the ladder (17 C1 after stage 1, 7 Cotton Braided) are a sunk ₹184.30 at pack price. Topping either up "to have the full range" would add stock of wicks this candle has already rejected. If a later fragrance needs C1, its own ladder will tell you, and the 17 are waiting.

From a closed bracket to a production order

Size the order from production, not from the pack list: wicks to buy = candles × wicks per candle × (1 + allowance), the formula from the 8 cm hub. The allowance covers rejects and retests; 5% is our worked-example figure. Because C1, C2 and Cotton Braided are flat per wick, any combination of packs that adds up to the number costs the same per wick: pick the combination with the fewest leftovers.

Which rung wins changes the wick bill by small sums: C2 costs ₹3.54 more per wick than C1, ₹446.04 a month at 126 wicks. Next to ₹11,328.00 of jars and ₹5,883.00 of oil, the wick is the cheap line. The expensive mistake is 120 candles poured on a rung whose neighbours you never tested. On the oil, note that three 500 g bottles cost ₹1.00 less than the 1 kg + 500 g route.

Reorder point

Reorder point = daily use × your lead time + safety stock. At 126 wicks a month, daily use is 4.2; with a 10-day order-to-bench time and a week of safety stock, reorder when you are down to 72 wicks of the approved rung. The 10 days is your figure: CSI dispatches from Pune and publishes no lead times or stock depth, so confirm dispatch on WhatsApp before a big run. Per-SKU reorder points across several wicks are the 500-candles-a-month reorder post; a long supplier lead time is the four-week lead-time post.

How many candles per rung beyond three, and why, is the three-candles-per-wick post; why one perfect candle is not a production licence is the one-perfect-candle post.

What to buy for a 7 cm ladder, and what to skip

Five items, in the order the ladder needs them, 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 a 7 cm ladder: Performance Wooden Wicks (₹590.00 for 10): one listing with no widths, so it cannot form a bracket; wooden versus cotton is a separate test. Eco Braided Wicks (₹472.00 for 5 m), which its page pitches at "large diameter container jars", and the Braided Wick Roll (₹706.82): unsized and cut to length, only worth a test if the bracket lands between rungs. Eco Candle Wicks Loose (₹413.00 for 5 m): untabbed, for "2 inch diameters"; buy it only if C1 passes and you need a fail below it.

Frequently asked questions