Wooden wick

A wooden wick is a thin, flat strip of wood, sometimes with a small cotton core, used in place of a braided cotton wick. It burns with a soft crackling sound that some buyers specifically look for, along with a flame that tends to be wider and flatter than a cotton wick's flame.

Wooden wicks matter because they burn differently from cotton in several ways: they can be more sensitive to draft, often need a slightly different fragrance load to burn cleanly, and generally require their own sizing rather than substituting directly for a cotton wick of a similar diameter. Getting a wooden wick to light reliably on the first try can also take a bit more care than lighting cotton.

Buying a sample set with a few widths makes it easier to test burn a wooden wick in a new wax or container before committing to a full batch. A common mistake is applying a cotton wick sizing chart directly to a wooden wick project, since the two materials do not scale the same way from one container width to the next.