Butters
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The butter is the body of the balm: what makes it feel rich rather than waxy, and what carries most of the failure modes in the next section.
What a butter does
Butters are solid or semi-solid fats that soften at body temperature. They sit between the wax and the liquid oil in every sense, hardness, melt, and how much trouble they cause.
They are also where graining comes from, which is a common defect in a handmade balm.
Shea
Soft, absorbs well, mild smell that some people dislike. The default butter in this craft.
It is also the worst offender for graining, because it contains fractions that crystallize at different rates. A shea balm that was smooth on Tuesday can be gritty by Friday if it cooled slowly.
Refined shea grains less and smells of less. Unrefined has more character and more risk. That is a real trade rather than a purity question.
Cocoa
Harder, glossier, and it smells of chocolate whether or not you wanted it to. It sets firm, which makes it useful in a summer formula and stiff in a winter one.
Cocoa butter is on the monograph list at 50 to 100 percent, so it is the one butter that can be an active ingredient. At that level it is not an addition to a formula, it is the formula.
Mango, kokum and the harder ones
Mango sits close to shea with less smell and less graining. Kokum is harder and very stable, and a small amount firms a formula without the drag carnauba brings.
Both are good answers to a shea balm that keeps going gritty, and both cost more.
The temperamental ones
Any butter with a wide melting range wants to be taken above its full melt and then cooled fast. Holding a batch warm for an hour and then pouring slowly is how a good formula turns grainy, and the recipe is not what went wrong.