Wicking 3 inch pillars using 1274 and 3tbs palm stearic

[faerydust]

hi everyone....i don't make alot of pillars and i don't sell them. what i do make i generally burn myself. my best friend is having a party next weekend and asked me to make her 7 pillars for her fireplace display. she has one of those 7 place thingys that you put in your fireplace w/candles on them...so sorry i can't remember the name of it..lol

anyhoo...i will be using sugared plums from ng and pink color blocks and i was hoping someone could give me a wicking starting point. i have all rrd sizes, most lx's going up to 30. cd's, zincs and cottons.. oh and they will be 3 inch pillars!

i don't think she will be taking time to hug them, i can't even get her to trim a wick in a jar...i turned her on to tarts on an electric burner..much safer this way..LOL :rolleyes2 therefore maybe a wick that will leave a bit of a shell. thanks in advance for any input at all...i only ask for a starting point because i have minimal test time...she sprung it on me last night!!!

[Fern]

I've never used the 1274 wax, but if it's a straight paraffin, it should perform close to the other paraffin waxes in a 3" mold. I would suggest with the RRDs that you start with a 47, then go up from there. With the LX's start with 26 or 28 and go up to a 30 if you have to. I haven't used the CD-s in quite awhile but start with a 16 or an 18 with those and go from there. There are many things to consider with wicking such as FO load, dye, etc. So you will just have to test them for each and every scent and dye combination that you use...because it makes a difference. Also, while testing, be sure to burn them all the way down because although they may look like they are burning great for the first half of the candle, things can quickly change from that point forward. Good luck!

[DanaE]

When I use 1274, I use low smoke 21 wicks and they work perfectly! They're close to a 60Z regular zinc wick (half way between a 51Z and a 60Z).

I miss 1274 *sigh*. I had the perfect wick for it, but I can't get it locally and shipping was killing me. I'm now using 4045H mottling wax, but I have to wick up at least one size and sometimes 2 sizes. Now I have like 300 of the low smoke 21s and nothing to use them on right now! lol

One day someone will get smart and carry the 1274 close to me, darn it!

DanaE

[Henryk]

I was actually going to try to make some mottles out of 1274 this weekend.

Dana, do you or anyone know if you can get both mottle and rustic at the same time with this particular wax? I was always curious and basically think for mottling, pour hot, cool slow, but with rustic, its poor cool. Just wondering if you can get mottling and rustic in the same layer?

TIA

[faerydust]

dana that stinks that noone carries it near you!!!! is the 4045H a blend from candlewic? if so and you are ordering from PA you might want to try the 145mp igi pillar wax at c&s. it comes in granules and i got a 10lb test bag and love it. its gone now but i am going to order some more soon. it reminds me alot of 1274 only no breaking up slabs. it also has an AWESOME scent throw!!!! i think i like the scent throw w/that better then 1274. i can't remember what the number is off the top of my head but its listed under the pillar wax close to the bottom of the page

fern thank you so much for all the suggestions well time to get home and pour so i can get testing!!!! have a great evening everyone.

kim

[DanaE]

dana that stinks that noone carries it near you!!!! is the 4045H a blend from candlewic? if so and you are ordering from PA you might want to try the 145mp igi pillar wax at c&s. it comes in granules and i got a 10lb test bag and love it. its gone now but i am going to order some more soon. it reminds me alot of 1274 only no breaking up slabs. it also has an AWESOME scent throw!!!! i think i like the scent throw w/that better then 1274. i can't remember what the number is off the top of my head but its listed under the pillar wax close to the bottom of the page

fern thank you so much for all the suggestions well time to get home and pour so i can get testing!!!! have a great evening everyone.

kim

Faerydust, does it actually say "mottling wax" so I'll know which one to look for? I do get the 4045H from candlewic because the shipping rate is outstanding, but I'm always up to trying new waxes . I've ordered from C&S on several occasions and I've checked their waxes out recently, but missed the mottling wax. If you can find the exact name/number of the wax could you post it here or PM me? I'll order it tomorrow and give it a shot (I've tried all the other mottling waxes, might as well try this one!).

And if you'll PM me with your address I'll send you some low smoke 21s and low smoke 19s to try in your pillars. I just ordered 500 of the LS 19's so I have plenty of wicks!

Henry, to answer your question, I've occasionally had pillars where it had mottling and rustic on the same layer. I've never purposely tried to do it though and it usually happens when I'm trying to do mottles but don't have the wax hot enough, or I let the mold get too cool and don't zap it with the heat gun first. I'll pour at 170 into a slightly cool mold and what I get is some of the white stuff, but you can see the mottling through it. Pretty neat.

DanaE

[topofmurrayhill]

When I use 1274, I use low smoke 21 wicks and they work perfectly! They're close to a 60Z regular zinc wick (half way between a 51Z and a 60Z).

I miss 1274 *sigh*. I had the perfect wick for it, but I can't get it locally and shipping was killing me. I'm now using 4045H mottling wax, but I have to wick up at least one size and sometimes 2 sizes. Now I have like 300 of the low smoke 21s and nothing to use them on right now! lol

One day someone will get smart and carry the 1274 close to me, darn it!

DanaE

If you're close to Candlewic you may be within reasonable distance of CandleScience and they have the 1274. There's not much difference between 1274 and 1343 though. Alan says they're actually the same wax, but seems they do some sorting out before deciding which way to label it. In the batches I've gotten 1343 mottles almost as much as 1274 and any small difference can be easily tweaked with FO or additive. In the past couple of months I've made lots of test candles side by side with these two.

[Henryk]

Thanks Dana.

I know there was a 1343A and a 1343N that was sorted out - if it mottled it was A, if not it was N.

Alex do you happen to know if the 1274 will mottle on its own without FO or any oil? Many times I like to make unscented candles and was wondering if I need to add any oil to get it to mottle.

BTW, do you know if the parol oil that genwax sells performs differently than plain mineral oil? I didn't know so I just put some on my last order from them. I looked it up though and the viscosity is a lot lower than plain mineral oil. Using your drinking straw analogy, if you can get the same or better mottle with a lower viscosity oil, that should be a good thing.

[topofmurrayhill]

Henryk, the 1274 doesn't mottle on its own, but 3% oil should be plenty without additives. If you want to minimize the oil as much as possible, add something like 1.5% stearic and that will give it a boost.

If I gave this wax to you in a 1343 box you'd probably never notice anything amiss, so that should set your expectations. I've been seeing a difference in mottling properties but it's not dramatic.

I think the way to interpret it when a manufacturer calls a straight paraffin a "mottling wax" is that they're just guaranteeing you won't get some weird batch that doesn't mottle, and maybe they intend to keep the properties pretty consistent. Otherwise most of them are mottling waxes.

Regarding the parol oil versus mineral oil...I've made very few unscented mottles and I don't know the answer. I still have some of that very same parol oil from Genwax on my shelf but I've never even tried mineral oil.

[DanaE]

It probably comes down to the way the case you ordered worked...when I ordered a case of 1343A and used it, I couldn't get a consistent mottle. I got some pretty neat effects, but the mottle was sometimes these huge snowflakes, sometimes I had large ares of translucent wax with no mottle, etc. When I bought my first case of 1274, it mottled consistently, with very small mottles (not large snowflakes). I decided I liked that particular look better, which is why I chose it. I already carry a pillar wax that gives me a creamy, smooth , opaque look, so I didn't need an all purpose wax; I needed a mottling wax. Then I couldn't find 1274 close by anymore, so decided to try the 4045H, which also gives the small mottles.

There must be a something just a little different between the 4045H and 1274 (not just straight paraffin) since I have to wick them so differently. There's also, to me, some difference in the 1343 and 1274, since they performed so differently for me. I usually make my first test candle the exact same scent every time, just for comparison, so I don't think it's a difference in the FO.

The best part of candlemaking is testing waxes and playing with different qualities of the wax. I don't find it frustrating - I find it fun, which is why I have bags of additives sitting on my work table. Some days I just start throwing handfuls of stuff into a wax mix to see what happens. Some days I mix 4 or 5 waxes together just to see what happens. I have ADD when it comes to candle making.

DanaE

[Henryk]

Thanks DanaE and Alex,

I haven't done side-by-side comparisons of the 1343A and 1274, in fact I haven't done any 1274 yet - but today is the day

I bought the 1274 because of what DanaE said. (I did alot or reading on this and over and over I hear that word "consistent".) I did post some pictures on some thread with 1343A mottling - adding vybar 343 gave much more consistent mottling than just stearic. So it depends on the additives also.

I'd love to be able to use ONE pillar wax, but I just have to test more to see if I can do that.

Alex, by saying "If you want to minimize the oil as much as possible, add something like 1.5% stearic and that will give it a boost." I'm reading that as the stearic won't inhibit the mottling, but will inhibit any sweating? Will 1274 sweat with just 3% of FO?

Thanks again for your help.

[topofmurrayhill]

There must be a something just a little different between the 4045H and 1274 (not just straight paraffin) since I have to wick them so differently. There's also, to me, some difference in the 1343 and 1274, since they performed so differently for me. I usually make my first test candle the exact same scent every time, just for comparison, so I don't think it's a difference in the FO.

Those three are all straight paraffins and they are all different, especially 4045 versus the other 2.

IGI alone sells dozens of different kinds of straight fully-refined paraffins. Apart from small variations in the oil content, the difference between the waxes is the assortment of molecules you get. Paraffin molecules are little chains that come in a lot of different lengths, as well as a few variations in shape (normal paraffins, iso-paraffins and cyclo-paraffins). The mix of lengths and shapes in a particular wax results in major variations in properties such as melting point, hardness, cooling curve, crystalline structure, etc. etc.

The vast majority of them will mottle if you put enough FO in them, because that's just what wax wants to do when you disrupt its crystalline structure by dissolving a lot of liquid in it. The only thing that makes one particular type of wax a mottling wax is the label on the box. It implies that this particular wax has struck the manufacturer as being useful to people making mottled candles and they intend to stay on top of the molecular mix to make sure there aren't big variations in the results.

As far as inconsistent results within a batch of 1343, it could have been an extra-sensitive batch of wax but the inconsistencies themselves were still probably due to procedural issues. This type of candle is a delicate balance if you want to finesse it, and a partial mottle can be very sensitive to cooling conditions as well as less than 1% variations in FO and additive.

Lately I've been more product-oriented in designing mottles, and I've found that tuning up the aesthetics with a particular FO requires formulas to be adjusted in increments of .25% percent, or even smaller with some additives.

[topofmurrayhill]

Alex, by saying "If you want to minimize the oil as much as possible, add something like 1.5% stearic and that will give it a boost." I'm reading that as the stearic won't inhibit the mottling, but will inhibit any sweating? Will 1274 sweat with just 3% of FO?

Very possibly. To mottle the candle in the first place, you have to push the liquid retention level of the wax (which sems to be in the vicinity of 4% for a typical 138 MP paraffin), plus mottling and sweat go hand in hand. The process of mottling pushes liquid out of the wax.

The candle tends to dry out after it's de-molded because the surface liquid either evaporates (I guess FO is more advantageous than mineral oil in this respect) or gets absorbed into the candle. How quickly that happens and how well it hangs onto the liquid after that is a matter of your formulation and may keep you busy for some time.

Stearic absolutely will inhibit mottling, but it happens gradually. If you start with a full mottle, it would probably take 10% stearic to kill it completely. At the level I mentioned it would have the effect of increasing the mottling (but maybe also the bleed). Trust me, the effect of stearic acid is rock-solid consistent and reliable, but you have to do some testing to understand how it works.

Vybar 343 is just a new-fangled stearic replacement. The results aren't the same but there are some similarities. After some careful testing you can judge whether it's useful.

[clonefan80]

Dana, I thought I was a minority here cause i wick my 1274 with the low smoke zincs. I thought they were worthless in my containers but they work great with my pillars. I use the 51z for the 3" as well.....

[DanaE]

TopofHillMurray, you may be right that they're all straight paraffins, but their descriptions are misleading. Even on the Candlescience site it says that 1274 is a preblended wax, not a straight paraffin.

I'm no chemist (leave that to my husband, he's the one with the Ph.D!), I just know the differences I personally found and what worked best for me. My work room is the basement, which obviously can affect the cooling temps of all my pillars, and therefore 1343A may just be a little fussier about being kept warm. Or I could have gotten a wonky box, who knows? I've gotten my share of cases of OK6228 that acted very differently from previous batches. But like I said, I honestly don't need a 'do everything' wax, since I use OK6228 for my opaque, smooth pillars. I wanted something that would give me a mottle every single time without worrying. I don't have to wrap the molds or keep them warm; I just pour and walk off. They've obviously tweaked the wax to get the best mottle, which is all I need.

I do believe that 1343A is great for someone looking for one wax to do it all - but I could never give up my OK6228, so I just want something that'll always be consistent (mottled or rustic) and holds a good percentage of FO

DanaE