What makes paraffin container wax soft?

[coconut]

I'm just wondering what is added to paraffin to make it soft for containers, or do they add something to soft wax to make it hard for pillars? I've been testing 4630 for 2 years with almost every wick ever made, and finally I think I found a good wick for it but it is a wick designed for soy-WI Premier 700. I've tried other wicks designed for natural wax could not find any small enough until now. Go figure.

[topofmurrayhill]

Almost all paraffin is hard, regardless of the melt point, so pillar wax is hard from the start. The pre-blends for pillars are relatively simple - just plain paraffin with the additives thrown in.

What makes one-pour blends soft is oil or materials that are very oily. What you would think of as "regular" paraffin in those blends can be hard or slightly on the softer side (scale wax), depending on which formulation we're talking about, but it's never really super-soft.

These blends tend to be more complicated than the "paraffin plus additives" concept that we usually think about. They are a mixture of different materials that give them the desired properties and in some cases regular paraffin can make up considerably less than half the blend. But the simplest answer is that they're soft because they're oily.

[coconut]

Thank you so much, Top! That makes sense to me now, why the wicks for soy would work better. I'm off to do more testing.

Gratefully yours, Coconut