I’m Using a 7 cm Jar with 10% Sandalwood Fragrance and the Wick Develops a Large Mushroom After Two Hours — Is the Wick Too Large or Is the Fragrance Contributing?

Two suspects, one symptom

A mushroom is a cap of carbon that builds on the wick tip as it burns: the wick draws more fuel than the flame burns cleanly, and the excess chars on the tip. Makers commonly link it to three things: a wick that is too large for the pool it sits in, heavier or more complex oils, and higher fragrance loads. Long sessions and untrimmed wicks make any of them worse. These are tendencies, not CSI measurements; CSI publishes no wick-performance data for any oil.

Your candle has all three at once. The wick is whatever you chose; the oil is a woody Sandalwood; the load is 10%, the top of what both the Sandalwood page ("Recommended load up to 10% for soy") and CSI 464 ("Fragrance Load Up to 10%") state. (Whether 10% is at or over CSI 464's line depends on a basis the page does not state; see the unscented-to-10% post.) Change the wick now and you might fix it for the wrong reason, then meet the same cap in your next woody scent.

The attribution triad

Pour three candles from one melt of CSI 464, into three jars from one batch, with three wicks from one pack (the wick that mushroomed; C2 in this worked example). Weigh per candle: the unscented candle is 150 g of wax; each scented candle is 15 g of oil and 135 g of wax, 10% of total weight. Same pour temperature (80–85°C in the 150 g jar, whose page states "Safe for hot pour up to 85°C"), same stir, same cure (Sandalwood's page states 48–72 hours for soy; we would wait about a week), same still room.

Cash from nothing: ₹3,916.82, of which ₹2,513.40 is the Sandalwood 500 g; if you already own Sandalwood, it is ₹1,403.42. Costs are worked examples and exclude labour, freight, packaging and GST. One candle per cell is the minimum; a twin triad (two of each, six candles) is better, because one odd candle cannot then decide. It needs 30 g of Sandalwood from the same 500 g (₹150.80 worth, 470 g left), a 50 g Lavender (30 g used, 20 g left), 840 g of wax (a 1 kg bag, 160 g left), six jars and six wicks: ₹1,362.06 consumed, ₹4,329.20 from nothing.

How to burn and read it

A simple present/absent-and-size note is enough for this decision. A fuller scale for grading mushrooms across many burns is the mushrooming-over-several-cycles post; use it if you are testing several oils.

Reading the triad at two hours

The logic is simple. The unscented candle has the wick and the wax but no oil: if it caps, oil is not needed to explain the cap, so the wick is the first thing to change. Lavender at 10% has the same wick and the same load but a lighter oil: if it stays clean while Sandalwood caps, the difference is the oil. If both oils cap and the unscented candle doesn't, the common factor is oil at 10%, whichever oil.

With a twin triad, read each pair before reading the pattern. If the two unscented candles disagree (one capped, one clean), the wick itself is behaving inconsistently: check that both wicks came from one pack, sat centred and were trimmed to the same length, and look for a draught on one side of the room before trusting any other cell. If the two Sandalwood candles disagree, treat Sandalwood as "sometimes capped" and pour one more of it; a heavy oil that caps on some burns and not others is usually close to the limit of that wick, which is useful to know in itself.

Why two hours, and not the end of a four-hour session? Because two hours is when your problem showed up, and carbon keeps building the longer a flame runs. Reading every candle at the same clock time is what makes the comparison fair. Note the end-of-session state too, but decide on the two-hour photos; if caps only appear after three or four hours in all three candles, you are looking at session length, which is a care-label question as much as a wick question.

Sourcing Sandalwood while 50 g and 100 g are out

On 1 October 2026, Sandalwood Fragrance Oil's 15 g (₹93.22), 50 g (₹271.40) and 100 g (₹502.68) are all out of stock. In stock: 500 g (₹2,513.40, ₹5.03 a gram) and 1 kg (₹5,026.80, the same ₹5.03 a gram; two 500 g packs cost exactly the same, ₹5,026.80). So the 500 g is the smallest Sandalwood you can buy, and we will not pretend otherwise: the triad uses 15 g of it and leaves 485 g.

Argued against our own interest: ₹2,513.40 is a lot to commit to an oil the triad might tell you to reformulate at a lower load or drop. Three ways to keep it small. First, use Sandalwood you already have from the batch that capped: it is the oil under suspicion, which is exactly what the test needs. Second, ask us on WhatsApp whether the 15 g is due back before you plan to pour; we do not publish restock dates. Third, if you buy the 500 g, plan the 485 g left as your next tests and, if Sandalwood survives the verdict, your first full-life candles. Do not swap in a different woody oil for this test: the question is whether Sandalwood itself caps, and another oil cannot answer it.

If you will sell Sandalwood at 8% rather than 10% after the triad, the 500 g makes 41 candles at ₹60.32 of oil each. The 100 g, when it was in stock, was priced at the same ₹5.03 a gram as the 500 g.

What each verdict sends you to next

If you meet the same question in a wider jar, the 8 cm version (where Sandalwood under-melts rather than mushrooms) is the 8 cm Sandalwood post, and the oud-at-10% confound in 7.5 cm is the 7.5 cm oud post. For a range that mixes light and heavy oils in one jar, the four-oil screen shows which oils earn their own bracket.

What to buy, and what to skip

Five items for the triad, chosen on page statements, price and stock on 29 September 2026 (Sandalwood stock rechecked 1 October 2026). CSI publishes no wick-performance data, so nothing is ranked on burn results. Oil candle counts are per 150 g candle at 12 g (8%) and 15 g (10%).

Frequently asked questions