Turning a season's wax into candles for the Christmas markets — filtering to a clean pour and picking wick size

Provence, eight years. The honey is sold and the wax bucket is full, so October and November are candle months here. My process, and where I'd like input. Cappings wax gets washed, solar-melted in summer, then re-melted gently in a double boiler — never direct heat, and I keep it well under smoking temperature because overheated beeswax darkens and loses the smell that people are actually paying for. I filter through a double layer of cotton into a warm jug; if the wax cools while filtering it clogs and I lose half an hour. Where I'm inconsistent is wicking. Beeswax is harder and denser than paraffin, so the wick that a mould supplier recommends is usually a size too small — I get tunnelling and a drowned flame in my 40 mm pillars. I've gone up two sizes of square-braid and it's better but now the taller ones smoke a little. What do people use for a 40 mm beeswax pillar, and does anyone bother priming wicks in molten wax first? Also interested in whether anyone has found a filter cloth that doesn't cost a fortune.