Fragrance Load Calculator

In short A fragrance load is a percentage OF THE WAX, quoted as an addition rather than a share — the same convention as a colourant in a glaze recipe, and the same trap. 200 grams of wax at 8% takes 16 grams of oil and pours 216 grams in total, which is more than the wax you started with. BUT THE DIRECTION THAT MATTERS IS THE OTHER ONE, AND IT IS WHERE JARS OVERFLOW. A container holds a fixed total. If your jar takes 200 grams of finished candle, you do not fill it with 200 grams of wax and then add 8% — that is 216 grams trying to fit in a 200 gram jar, and the overflow is exactly the load. The wax has to be divided out of the total first: 200 divided by 1.08 is 185.2 grams of wax, leaving 14.8 grams of oil. This page does that inversion for you, and it is the single most useful thing on it. The identity behind both directions is that total pour divided by wax weight always equals one plus the load over a hundred. The wax weight cancels, so a recipe scales from a tester to a hundred jars without a percentage changing. There is a ceiling, and it is a property of the wax and the oil together rather than of either alone. Soy is usually said to hold around 10%, paraffin a little more, beeswax considerably less. Past the ceiling the wax simply stops absorbing the oil: it separates out as beads on the surface or an oily film, and the wick struggles. Your supplier's figure for the actual pairing beats any general number, including the one here. TWO PRACTICAL THINGS. Weigh the oil rather than measuring it, because fragrance oils differ in density and millilitres are not interchangeable between one oil and the next — a scale reading to a tenth of a gram is the cheapest consistency improvement available. And no arithmetic on this page reaches scent throw. How strongly a candle smells depends on the oil, the wax, the wick, the cure and the room. This gets the weights right for the load you chose; choosing the load is a matter of testing.