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Candle making
All Containers›Shop by use case›Candle making›Burn testing›Writing the test downShop all candles →
Burn testing

Writing the test down

By Dwight Davis, Founder

Updated

On this page5

An untested candle and a tested candle with no record are the same thing to anybody who asks.

The record is the product of the test

You will not remember in six months whether the 464 with 8 percent of a particular oil in a 9 oz straight-sided jar took a CD 12 or a CD 14. You will have to test it again.

And when a retailer or an insurer asks whether you test, the record is what the answer consists of.

What a sheet holds

Date, and a test number.

Wax and supplier. Fragrance, supplier and load percentage. Dye and amount. Wick series and size. Vessel, with its dimensions.

Cure time before the test.

Then per cycle: hours burned, melt pool diameter and depth, flame height, wick condition, vessel temperature, and any observation.

And a verdict at the end: pass, fail, or the specific change to try next.

Photographs

One at the end of each cycle, from directly above for the melt pool and from the side for the flame.

They cost nothing and they are far better than notes for comparing two wick sizes a month apart.

Keeping them

One sheet per combination of wax, fragrance, load, dye, wick and vessel. That is the unit, not one per fragrance.

Which sounds like a lot of sheets, and it is: a range of six fragrances in two vessel sizes is twelve tested systems. Knowing that number before committing to a range is one of the more useful things this page can tell you.

References

ASTM F2417, Standard Specification for Fire Safety for Candles. Minimum safety requirements for candles and candle ensembles, including flame height, stability, secondary ignition and end of useful life. Voluntary. astm.org
US Consumer Product Safety Commission. Candles and Candle Accessories, the agency page setting out the voluntary standards it participates in and the mandatory ban. cpsc.gov
Written from the federal regulation, the CPSC material and the published scope of the ASTM candle standards. The standards themselves are copyrighted documents that must be bought; what is described here is their scope and requirements as published, not their text. Your own burn testing against your own vessel and wick is what establishes whether a candle you made is safe.