What goes wrong

The jar deformed

Updated October 2026

On this page8

What it looks like Why it happens It shows up at capping Pour cooler, or change material Check the data field, not the photograph Pour three before you pour three hundred The cost lands on the wax, not the jar References

This is the most common expensive failure on this shelf, and the catalog warns about it in a field most people never read.

What it looks like

A jar slightly out of round, a wall that has drawn in, a base that no longer sits flat, or a neck that takes its lid stiffly or crooked. Often subtle enough to pass a glance across a tray of jars.

Why it happens

PET has a maximum fill temperature of 120 F in this catalog’s own material data. A wax pour above that softens the wall while the wax is still liquid and heavy, and the jar takes a new shape as it cools.

It shows up at capping

A neck that has moved will not seal, and a lid that goes on crooked telegraphs the whole batch as a quality problem. By then the wax is in the jar and the jar cannot be reused.

Pour cooler, or change material

Lowering the pour temperature is sometimes possible and often costs surface quality. Moving to PP at 240 F or glass at 300 F removes the question, and between them they are half of this shelf.

Check the data field, not the photograph

A PET jar and a PP jar can look identical in a listing. The material and the temperature rating are published on every container page here, which makes this a two-second check rather than a judgment.

Pour three before you pour three hundred

At your real temperature, with your real wax, capped after setting. Every symptom above is visible in that test and none of them is visible in a catalog photograph.

The cost lands on the wax, not the jar

A deformed jar is cheap; the wax, the fragrance and the labor already in it are not, and neither is the lost sales window. That asymmetry is the argument for pouring three test jars rather than trusting a listing.

References

16 CFR 500.7, Net quantity of contents, method of expression, which requires the declaration to be in fluid measure if the commodity is liquid and in weight or mass if it is solid, semi-solid or viscous, unless a firmly established general consumer usage and trade custom says otherwise. law.cornell.edu

Written from federal regulation and from the catalog’s own material data, not from a pouring bench. Net quantity rules are federal and state weights and measures officials enforce their own programs alongside them. Anything here is a starting point rather than clearance for a specific label.