found this post from Marie about candelilla wax. She says as far as hardness is comparable to beeswax but it does absorb better. You may also want to search her site for her deodorant recipes (though she herself is against baking soda on the skin now).
Thanks for the link. I'll give it a look-over. I did find a post searching this forum that said to use candelilla wax at about 2/3 what you would use for beeswax, because of the hardness difference. Not sure about the baking soda on the skin thing, but I'm not using baking soda so not really a concern for now.
Lastly, is some of her latest salves or body butters I have seen her use a technique where she cools down the mix in ice bath and moves it out to either suspend powders or get a specific texture, not sure if you need that in your recipe. Here is the link:
https://www.humblebeeandme.com/quick-guide-candelilla-wax-liquid-oil-ratios/
That's interesting. I do need the magnesium powder suspended well because I don't think it's soluble so it will settle. It seems like putting the bars in the freezer right after pouring is working, both for tempering the shea butter and suspending the powder.
If you continue reading through the Defunk de Pits thread, you will see there was discussion about what additives to use such as candilla wax, and various other additives to help solidify the stick with MgSO4 and babassu, one of which was beeswax. Beeswax was opined to be less desirable than other potential ingredients.
Still need to get through that thread! I said in another thread that I have an experimenting problem, I want to just go for it and see what happens when I could read through these threads and see where people have already been where I'm at. The first step is admitting you have a problem...
I definitely can see why beeswax would be considered less desirable at this point, it's just too sticky. Just magnesium powder and oil would certainly be too soft though, hence why I started looking for something else.
Also, MgSO4? Is that magnesium sulfate? I've been using magnesium hydroxide, Mg(OH)2, which has been effective (at least in the spray form). Does "Defunk de Pits" cover the differences, perchance? I don't want to be using the wrong thing!
I travel a lot and carry my deo in a hot car when I travel (heat intensifies in a car when it is parked in a parking lot when I am not driving; heat intensifies in the trunk of the car even while driving) and with just babassu & MgSO4 it was melting. Hence my concerns about using additives to increase the melt point of the deo stick.
Definitely, I don't think this is something you could keep in a hot car, even with a high percentage of wax. I was worried about mine just in my warm house (not so warm today though...), so the other two sticks I'm not using yet are still in the fridge.
What is your specific recipe right now? Is it still with CO? CO doesn't absorb well into the skin in my experience. Under the armpit area, CO sat on my skin and felt greasy and took way too long to dry (I did not use it with MgSO4 - this was long before I used the recipe suggested via that thread). And it stained my clothes BIG TIME.
After rebatching yesterday, I mathed it out and what's in it now should be close to the following:
2.6 oz Beeswax
2.1 oz Shea Butter
1.5 oz Coconut Oil
0.4 oz Mg(OH)2
0.1 oz Fragrance
Makes (3) 2.2 fl oz sticks
So yes, still with CO. And it didn't soak through to my polo but my gray undershirt was stained darker on the underarms. Babassu comes today, candelilla wax tomorrow, so I may try another batch this weekend. If the babassu does absorb better then maybe I can get away with less wax, but I think the hardness of the stick is about right now that I've rebatched. And like I said before I searched the forum and saw that using 2/3 in candelilla wax what you use in beeswax gets you roughly the same hardness, so I was going to reformulate based on that.