i have been doing some research on trying to aquire paraffin, and outside of a bunch of far east suppliers the main thing im finding are candle hobbyist and this stuff called gulf household paraffin wax.
 
can someone with experiance in this area point me towards a good supplier?
thanks
kurt

I thought they probably would but as I was looking a lot are mixed with other types of wax/sents/oils/etc... and I wasn't sure if any of these affected performance of the engine? (ha maybe, paraffin with beeswax, cumcumber and lavander is the ultimate paraffin mix no one has thought of yet!) And yes, we will need quite a bit of it, we are hoping to do several test fires and flights in the upcoming months, and I am sure we will need plenty of practice to get the casting right as well.
 
I guess the main reason I am asking is we are trying to simplify anything we can, so if we have a proven trusted source from someone we will hopefully have oneless x-factor to worry about.
 
Thanks!

Hi and best of luck with your paraffin hybrid experiments!
 
Instead of using candles, I'd recommend starting off with canning/sealing paraffin that you can get in any supermarket, typically with the brand name "Parowax".  It's cheaper than the equivalent weight of candles most times -- although the ten-inch-by-two-inch glass-enclosed "saint's candles" (large votives with pictures of saints, etc. on the glass) can be pretty inexpensive.
 
You could try cheap "pillar" candles (fat, freestanding candles), which use a higher melting point paraffin than most "container" candles, because it's needed to keep the freestanding candles from slumping.  With "container" candles there's no guarantee of getting higher-melting-point wax.
 
You can often get 5 or 10 lb. slabs of candle wax or paraffin in hobby/craft stores and the price is generally better than for the 1 Lb boxes of Parowax.  But one box of Parowax is usually good for, let's say, six 38mm x 8" grains -- which is a good starting size for paraffin grain experiments.
 
I'd also suggest adding 10% by weight of low-temp "hot glue" sticks to further raise the melting point and help strengthen the grain.  These contain mostly "plastic wax", which has longer carbon chains than paraffin and thus too high a percentage will hurt the wax's regression rate.  But the higher melting point and stronger grain will help keep too much liquid paraffin from sloughing and flying out the nozzle when your grain is burned.  Play with the percentage until you get something that works best for you.
 
You can also get Vybar 103 from online candle suppliers or sometimes from the hobby/craft shop.  This has the same effect, is more expensive than glue sticks but you also use considerably less of it (maybe 2-3% by weight, typically) and it is designed especially for improving the physical characteristics of the paraffin.
 
You could also try using a wax that has a nice high melting point and hardness, even without any additives, namely "Palm Wax".  Here's one source:
 
http://www.candlescience.com/wax/palm-wax.php
 
It can also be found sometimes in hobby/craft stores in 1-2 lb bags.  I'm testing it now and like it a lot.
 

Presence as a part of a fuel grain of a component with a high melting point impoverishes the best idea of use of low-melting hydrocarbonic combustible (paraffin). For increase of a mechanical durability without essential change of internal ballistics of solid fuel I would recommend use paper as filler (the toilet paper milled on a coffe grinder) or a skeleton, for example from the goffered filters (poliestеr) for industrial extractors.