What Should I Record When Comparing the Glass Adhesion of Different Candle Waxes?
शेयर करना
What do I record besides the wax? The nine things that are not the wax and could have caused what you see: jar preparation, how the glass was handled, the glass temperature at the pour, the wax temperature at the pour, the stir time, where in the batch the jar stood, what surface it cooled on, the room temperature, and any draught.
Can I score adhesion out of ten? Only against your own photographed reference pair — one jar you would ship and one you would not. No CSI wax page publishes an adhesion score, a contraction figure or a test method, so a number borrowed from nowhere will outlive your memory of inventing it. A count of discrete gaps and their height band is honest; an area percentage estimated by eye is not.
What does the sheet cost? Nothing. The instruments cost ₹708 — a Pen Thermometer at ₹354 and a Candle Making Weighing Scale at ₹354, which is exactly what a pack of ten 200 ml jars costs.
Why a sheet beats a good memory
A wax comparison is unusual among candle tests because its result arrives late and in instalments. A burn test resolves in three hours: you light the candle, you watch, you write down the pool time. An adhesion comparison resolves over a week or more, in a workshop where a dozen other things happen, and the thing you are judging is a visual impression rather than a reading. That combination is exactly the one human memory handles worst.
Worse, the question you will actually need to answer is not "which looked better" but "why". Suppose wax A's jars look cleaner than wax B's. Before you spend ₹5,074 on ten kilos of wax A you need to rule out the possibility that A's jars happened to be poured first from a hotter pot, or stood in the middle of the rack where they cooled more slowly, or were the five jars you wiped out because they looked dusty. Each of those is a real explanation and each is invisible a week later unless it was written down at the time. The nineteen one-time fields exist for precisely this: they are not bureaucracy, they are the alternative explanations, recorded in advance so you can eliminate them.
And there is a third reason, which is commercial. A comparison you can show somebody — twelve jars, four photographs each, with the conditions beside them — is the difference between "I think this wax is better" and a decision a stockist, a partner or your future self can audit. It is also what lets you detect a drift later: when a new lot of wax or jars behaves differently, you have a documented normal to compare it against instead of a feeling that things used to be fine.
The 22 fields, block by block
Here is the whole sheet. For each field: what to write, why it is on the list, and what goes wrong if you leave it off. One row per field, one sheet per jar — and yes, that means twelve sheets for a two-wax comparison at six jars each. Print them.
| # | Field | What to write | Why it earns a row | If you skip it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Block A · Identity (4 fields, once) | ||||
| 1 | Jar | Product name, finish, pack size, date it arrived | A new jar is a new qualification even at the same stated diameter | You cannot tell a wax result from a jar-lot result |
| 2 | Wax | Name, pack size, date the pack was opened | The variable under test; the pack and date identify the lot | A future lot difference becomes undetectable |
| 3 | Fragrance oil and load | Name, pack size, load % and which convention you used | Load is a candidate cause at the wall as well as a driver of throw | Two sheets using different load conventions are not comparable |
| 4 | Wick and sticker | Wick code and size; sticker used or not | A drifting wick touches the wall and changes what you are looking at | A leaning wick gets misread as an adhesion fault |
| Block B · Jar preparation (4 fields, once) | ||||
| 5 | Cleaned | Yes or no, and with exactly what | Residue on glass is one of the cheapest candidate causes to rule out | Half your comparison may be measuring your cleaning cloth |
| 6 | Dried | How, and how many minutes before the pour | A jar that went in damp is not the same jar as one that went in dry | An unexplained outlier with no way back to the cause |
| 7 | Handling | Gloves, bare hands or tongs — and who | Where a jar was gripped is often where a pattern appears | You lose the single most testable local explanation |
| 8 | Glass temperature at pour | °C on the inner wall, and how you measured it | Cold glass changes how the wax sets against it | Winter and summer batches become uncomparable |
| Block C · Thermal (4 fields, once) | ||||
| 9 | Fragrance-add temperature | °C when the oil went in | Three CSI waxes publish an add temperature; yours should match a stated figure or a recorded choice | Throw differences get blamed on the wax |
| 10 | Stir time and stirrer | Seconds, and what you stirred with | Eco Soy CSI 400 specifies two minutes; consistency matters more than the number | Uneven oil distribution looks like a wax property |
| 11 | Pour temperature | The actual thermometer reading, not the target | The strongest process lever on the wall; windows differ by 20°C between waxes | The whole comparison becomes uninterpretable |
| 12 | Single pour or topped up | And the top-up temperature if there was one | A second pour creates its own boundary at the wall | A top-up line gets counted as a gap |
| Block D · Cooling and environment (5 fields, once) | ||||
| 13 | Cooling surface | Wood, stone, metal, rack, trivet | What the base loses heat into changes the cooling sequence | Base-area patterns have no explanation |
| 14 | Position and spacing | Outer or centre of the batch; gap between jars in cm | Outer jars in a batch cool differently from centre jars | You compare a position effect and call it a wax effect |
| 15 | Room temperature | °C at the pour and at +2 hours | Ambient sets the cooling rate, which is the thing you are really varying | Monsoon batches and December batches merge into noise |
| 16 | Draught | Source, distance in cm, on or off | An air-conditioning draught is a one-sided cooling event | One-sided patterns look mysterious |
| 17 | Lid and movement | Lid on or off; moved or not moved in the first 4 hours | Moving a setting jar is a mechanical event at the wall | You will quietly disturb some jars and not others |
| Block E · Batch identity (2 fields, once) | ||||
| 18 | Pot number | Which melt this jar came from | Two pots are two slightly different wax histories | A pot effect is indistinguishable from a wax effect |
| 19 | Pour order | First jar, third jar, last jar | The last jar out of a pot is the coolest; that is a real gradient | You compare the start of one pot with the end of another |
| Block F · Observation (3 fields, re-entered at each of 4 checkpoints) | ||||
| 20 | Photograph reference | File name plus the checkpoint label | The photograph is the result; the reference is how you find it again | You end up with 48 images and no idea which is which |
| 21 | Gap map | Clock position (e.g. 2 o'clock from the mark) plus height band: base, lower third, middle, upper third, rim | Position is diagnostic — a band around the middle means something different from one side only | You lose the pattern, which is the most informative part |
| 22 | Change since last checkpoint | New, grown, unchanged or closed | Static gaps and growing gaps are different problems with different answers | You cannot tell a normal result from a drift |
The photograph protocol
Because adhesion has no published scale, the photographs are not illustration — they are the measurement. That means they have to be repeatable, and a phone camera is perfectly adequate as long as five things are held still. Fix them once, write them at the top of the sheet, and never change them mid-comparison.
| Fix | How to fix it cheaply | What goes wrong if you don't |
|---|---|---|
| Distance | A strip of tape on the bench where the jar stands and another where you hold the phone | A gap looks larger in a closer photo; you rank by how near you stood |
| Light | One lamp, same position, room lights off; never window light, which changes hourly | Afternoon jars beat morning jars regardless of the wax |
| Background | One sheet of plain white and one of plain black card, both shots every time | A gap can vanish against the wrong background — and so can a real difference |
| Orientation | The marker dot from the tip above, always facing the camera | Field 21 becomes meaningless and you photograph different sides of the jar |
| Camera settings | No flash, no filters, no portrait mode, no cropping afterwards | Processing softens exactly the contrast you are trying to read |
Two shots per checkpoint — white background and black background — because a gap is a contrast phenomenon and the two cards show you different things. On white, the dark region of a gap is obvious. On black, you see the edge of the gap and the subtler whitening of frosting separately, which is how you avoid recording frosting as adhesion. Twelve jars at two shots across four checkpoints is 96 images, which is nothing on a phone and everything to a decision.
Four checkpoints, fixed in advance
Why these four, and why "after your own cycle" rather than a number of days. Each checkpoint answers a different question, and the fourth is deliberately yours to define because no CSI page publishes an ageing protocol and nothing here will invent one.
| Checkpoint | When | The question it answers | What a gap here suggests |
|---|---|---|---|
| C1 | Within 60 minutes of pouring, while the surface is still setting | Did the wax ever key to the glass at all? | Something at the interface at the moment of contact — glass temperature, residue, handling. Pour and glass temperature are the first things to vary |
| C2 | 24 hours | What did contraction do as the jar came to room temperature? | The ordinary case. This is the checkpoint most makers mean when they say "my candles have wet spots" |
| C3 | 7 days | Is it stable, or still moving? | Unchanged from C2 is a good, normal result. Grown since C2 means the candle is still settling and a verdict at 24 hours would have been wrong |
| C4 | After one temperature cycle you choose and describe exactly | What will a courier and a customer's shelf do to it? | A gap that only appears after a cycle is the one your workshop never sees and your customer always does |
On C4, be precise and be modest. Write down exactly what you did — for example, "eight hours in a closed room reaching 36°C, then back to a 26°C bench overnight, measured with the pen thermometer" — and treat it as a repeatable thing you did, not as an industry standard. There is no published conversion from a cycle like that to months on a shelf, and anyone who offers you one is guessing. Its value is purely comparative: all twelve jars went through the same cycle, so differences between them mean something even though the absolute result means nothing.
The three things worth buying
The sheet is free. Three purchases turn it from a list of impressions into a set of readings, and all three outlive the comparison — every batch you pour afterwards is recordable. Each card shows every listed pack.
| Size | Price | Per piece |
|---|---|---|
| Default Title | ₹354 | — |
| Size | Price | Per piece |
|---|---|---|
| Pack of 10 | ₹944 | ₹94.40 |
| Pack of 20 | ₹1,888 | ₹94.40 |
| Size | Price | Per piece |
|---|---|---|
| 1 sheet - 40 stickers | ₹100 | ₹2.50 |
| 1 sheet - 100 stickers (sold out) | ₹236 | ₹2.36 |
Filling the sheet for one jar
Here is the sheet in use, in the order the fields actually get filled, so nothing has to be reconstructed. The whole sequence adds perhaps four minutes per jar at the pour and ninety seconds per checkpoint.
What not to record
A record sheet can also do harm, by giving a made-up number the authority of a measurement. These are the entries to keep off it, and what to write instead.
| Do not record | Why it is not a measurement | Record instead |
|---|---|---|
| "Adhesion: 7/10" | There is no published adhesion scale in the CSI range or anywhere on these product pages, so the 7 means whatever you felt that morning | A rank against your own two photographed reference jars — one you would ship, one you would not |
| "About 15% of the surface affected" | Area through curved glass cannot be estimated by eye, and the figure will drift between checkpoints as your eye adapts | A count of discrete gaps plus their height bands. Counts are countable |
| "Wax contracted 2%" | No CSI wax page publishes a contraction rate or coefficient, and you have not measured one | "Gap present at 2 o'clock, middle band, unchanged since C2" |
| "Equivalent to 3 months on a shelf" | There is no published conversion from any temperature cycle to real time, and inventing one is the easiest way to mislead yourself | The cycle you actually ran, written out: hours, temperatures, how measured |
| "Better than last batch" | Not unless last batch was photographed the same way — and "better" is not a field, it is a conclusion | The photograph, plus the conditions. Let the comparison happen when you lay two images together |
The deeper point is that the honest answer to "how much adhesion variation is acceptable" is a number your brand chooses, not a figure the industry publishes. The sheet's job is to make that choice reviewable: photograph a jar you are happy to ship and a jar you are not, keep both images at the front of the file as your reference pair, and rank everything against them. Then the threshold is written down, visible to whoever packs the boxes, and changeable on purpose rather than by mood. Setting it is covered in how much variation is normal before it is a commercial problem.
CANDLEMAKINGSUPPLIESINDIA supplies raw materials, not finished candles, and does not manufacture wax. The commercially convenient thing for a wax seller to do here would be to hand you a scoring scale with our waxes near the top of it. We have done the opposite: this page tells you that no scale exists on any of our product pages, that you should refuse to write one down, and that the only defensible record is your own photograph of your own jar.
Every price and specification comes from live CSI stock in September 2026 and links to the product page, where current pricing always takes precedence. Equipment descriptions are the product pages' own wording. Stated wax temperatures are quoted only where a page gives them — Luxury Soy Wax Chunks' 80–90°C add and 70–80°C pour, Eco Soy CSI 400's 85°C add and two-minute stir — and they are formulation guidance, not regulatory limits. No CSI page publishes an adhesion score, a contraction rate, an acceptable-defect percentage or an accelerated-ageing conversion, and every temperature and duration in the fourth checkpoint is explicitly the reader's own choice.
For bulk pricing on jars and equipment, GST invoicing, MSDS or IFRA documentation, message us on WhatsApp at +91 7397976926.
Frequently asked questions
- Can two waxes burn identically but adhere very differently?
- Diagnose wet spots before replacing raw materials
- How much adhesion variation is normal?
- Should glass adhesion be a major wax-selection criterion?
- How to test hot throw before launching a candle fragrance
- How to compare two fragrance oils using a controlled burn test
- Why your candle needs a 14-day cure
Customer reviews: The six reviews at the top of this page are genuine, published Judge.me reviews left by CSI customers on their product pages. Names, star ratings, dates and products are as recorded by Judge.me; three longer reviews are shortened with an ellipsis and otherwise unedited.
Figures verified September 2026: Pen Thermometer For Candle Making ₹354. Candle Making Weighing Scale ₹354 — page states a "large, easy-to-read LCD display" showing "measurements in grams or ounces" and "simple one-button operation". Candle Wick Stickers ₹100 for 1 sheet of 40 stickers = ₹2.50 each; the 100-sticker sheet (₹236) is listed but currently sold out; page states a 10 mm diameter, adhesive that "keeps your wick firmly in place, even through hot wax pours", and heat resistance. Clear Glass Jar with Golden Lid (150 gram) ₹944 per 10 and ₹1,888 per 20 = ₹94.40 each; page states "150g fill capacity", "Height 8cm, outer diameter 7cm", base diameter approximately 6.5 cm, "thick-walled clear glass" and "Safe for hot pour up to 85°C"; 12 jars = ₹1,132.80. Bamboo Stirring Sticks for Mixing Wax ₹118 per 5 = ₹23.60 each (₹1,062 per 50, ₹1,888 per 100). Mini Electric Wax Melter ₹2,360 — page states 1 litre capacity and dual 300 W and 600 W power modes. Clear Glass Votive Jar 70 gram ₹159.30 per 5 = ₹31.86 each. 200 ml jar family ₹708 per 10 = ₹70.80 each. Wax reference figures: Luxury Soy Wax CSI 464 10 kg ₹5,074 and Premium Coconut Soy CSI 468 10 kg ₹6,370; CSI 464 states "Pour Temperature 80°C – 90°C" and CSI 468 "Pour Temperature 58°C – 60°C"; Luxury Soy Wax Chunks state "Recommended fragrance add temp 80-90°C" and a pour of 70–80°C (75–80°C in the same page's details table); Eco Soy CSI 400 states fragrance added "at 85°C (185°F), stir gently for 2 minutes, and pour directly" and a "Fragrance Add Temperature 80 to 90 degrees". Fragrance loads and temperatures are wax formulation guidance, not regulatory limits. Sheet arithmetic: 4 + 4 + 4 + 5 + 2 = 19 one-time fields; 3 observation fields × 4 checkpoints = 12 further entries; 19 + 12 = 31 entries and 22 distinct fields per jar. Two waxes × 6 jars = 12 jars → 12 × 31 = 372 entries, 12 × 4 = 48 photographs, or 96 images at two backgrounds per checkpoint. Instrument set ₹354 + ₹354 = ₹708, the same as a pack of ten 200 ml jars. Not published anywhere in the CSI range, and therefore never recorded as a number here: any adhesion score or scale, any wax contraction rate or percentage, any acceptable-defect percentage, any threshold temperature at which a gap forms, and any conversion from a temperature cycle to real shelf time. The fourth checkpoint's temperatures and durations are the reader's own choice and must be written down as such. Prices and availability change — the linked product pages are always authoritative.