Viz’et’Viz Cecils Candle Wax Answer
Is there a definitive candle wax substance.
In days of yore fat was used followed by tallow.
Now we have petroleum based waxes to light our candle lit dinners.
Is there though a better wax substitute.
A substance that gives a longer burn time with no smoke or fumes.
Has there been much in the way of candle innovation in the last 100 years.
The best classic candles were beeswax, but they were substantially more expensive.
Or… Spermaceti was used for the best candles- apparently it gives a very brilliant light, so much so, that the term “Candlepower” refers to the light given off by a spermaceti candle.
Fascinating!
Although I do think that having to nobble a poor whale to get a decent candle is pushing it.
That it mind, from your link could Jojoba Esters be used as a substitute for the candles content.
It states it can be used in deferrence to whale oil in many of its applications, are brilliant luminence candles one of them?
A candle is essentially a lamp with solid fuel, using wax or semi-solid fats instead of oil. As mentioned earlier, beeswax was for a long time the premier substance for making candles. A handful of other sources of wax were also used, notably wax from bayberries. But waxes are much less common than oils and greases, and were usually very expensive. Tallow is rendered beef fat, which is inferior to wax for candles because it melts at a lower temperature; but in colder northern climates it was soild enough to make adequate (if very drippy) candles. Also, it was cheaper and easier to obtain. Many people used “rush lights”- a grease-soaked reed or straw that would burn for a hour or two, rather than candles.
The next big advance in candle chemistry was the discovery of sterene. Fats and oils are usually a compound of two different chemicals: glycerol, which is a sweetish liquid at room temperature, and one or more “fatty acids”, commonly sterene, which is a waxy solid at room temperature. Beginning in the nineteenth century, various processes were devised for splitting fats and oils into their components, and sterene candles became available. Once the petroleum industry got going however, paraffin became cheaper and higher quality than any competing substance.
Oh, and I just thought of something else to say about candle wax: paraffin wax is opaque because it’s actually a mixture of several different types of hydrocarbons that have slightly different molecular weights and melting points. You can now get special wax that is mono-isomeric (one particular hydrocarbon of high purity) that’s transparent.
Thanks Lumpy,
I did some googling on your transparent wax and found patents pending galore.
Although I did notice the recipes seem to more pertain to gel based or containerised candles (in a glass surround). Which lead me to wonder about there actual solidity.
A German group have a mixture of
Paraffin wax, 70; stearine, 15; petroleum, 15 by percentage content.
In the associated bumf it describes 15 pc of to be the limit to maintain a solid candle.
Would that be 15 pc petroleum or 15 pc stearine that the limit applies to , they don’t specify.
What is giving the candle transparancy and is it the same thing that is weakening it as a solid?
Cite? AFAIK, paraffin wax is translucent because it crystallizes, and the tiny crystalline domains scatter light. The same thing happens with pure eicosane – it can form clear crystals, but in common experience it pretty much looks like…wax.
Clear candles are usually from mineral oil, with a polymer resin added to stiffen it. I’d be interested to see where wendigo1974 came across that recipe, because it doesn’t look like it would produce a transparent wax. I suspect one or more errors in translation.
Nametag, see this Link
Well, that wasn’t much help. If they really do mean paraffin wax (and not paraffin oil, which is basically kerosene), then the only thing that might make that mixture transparent is the “petroleum,” which in this context probably refers to lamp oil (aka mineral oil, aka paraffin oil, aka Nujol, aka…). In that case what you’ve got is a pretty standard composite candle (paraffin/stearin) with some mineral oil added. Any transparency would be due to the oil interfering wih the formation of crystals in the wax. Since that’s what also makes the wax a solid, I’d guess that the formula isn’t really transparent or it isn’t really solid.
In the above discussions, I haven’t seen a good explanation of stearin. Stearin is properly called glyceryl tristearate, and it’s almost exactly the same thing as beef tallow, except that (a) the stearate can come from other sources, (b) tallow contains fatty acids besides stearic acid; and (c) stearin sold for candle making is highly refined. What you get is a very pure, very clean, and quite hard fat, which adds stiffness and reduces tackiness when added to paraffin or beeswax candles.