From: owner-scribes@castle.org (scribes digest) To: scribes-digest@castle.org Subject: scribes digest V5 #72 Reply-To: Sender: owner-scribes@castle.org Errors-To: owner-scribes@castle.org Precedence: bulk scribes digest Saturday, March 10 2001 Volume 05 : Number 072 ======================================================================== To unsubscribe from this list, send email to with unsubscribe scribes-digets in the body of the message. Leave the subject line blank. Do not include any additional text. Re: [scribes]: Annora's books Re: [scribes]:Sealing wax (LONG) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 14:40:01 EST From: Loerchen2@aol.com Subject: Re: [scribes]: Annora's books Hi -- Will those of you who said you were interested in specific books from my collection (but haven't sent payment yet) please contact me ASAP? I have to get these out of the living room before my husband has a fit. Thanks! Annora Loerchen2@aol.com =================================================================== To unsubscribe from this list, send email to with a blank Subject: line and unsubscribe scribes in the body of the message. Do not include any additional text in the body. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 16:53:24 +0000 From: Catie Helm-Clark Subject: Re: [scribes]:Sealing wax (LONG) Greetings to the list from Meisterin Therasia von Tux. Graidhne wrote: > Meisterin Therasia von Tux has done significant research and > experimentation with period sealing wax recipes. Problems she has run > into include that one of the major ingredients has a name that means > something else entirely today, and that no portions are given in the > period recipes. Is Tux on this list? Maybe she can elucidate. Graidhne forwarded some of the sealing wax/natural beeswax posts to me, probably to instigate a reply. Well, it worked - here's my reply. I'm going to cheat a little and quote from a post I wrote to SCA-arts about this subject. There are two caveats you should keep in mind as you're reading. First, this post describes my research into the composition of sealing wax as of 1997. That was almost four years ago. I've come up with some new stuff since then, which I will append after my 1997 post. The second caveat is that the web address for the Florilegium in the first paragraph of my 1997 post has changed. The Florilegium is now at www.florilegium.org. And now my 1997 post: > Waldt von Markheim and I have been attempting to make period > (ie medieval) sealing wax for several years. We have not yet succeeded. > For those who know us, this is very very unusual, to say the least. > We have been attempting several of the period recipes we've turned > up, and NOT ONE has yielded a usable sealing wax (though cross-ref'ing > with Massey resulted in a new recipe for gilding on leather and wood). > You can find some of these recipes and the refs they came from at: > http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/rialto/sealing-wax-msg.html > I'm confident the folks here can tell the substance from the dross. > > The essential result thus far is this: no variant of the beeswax plus > period turpentine plus "drying" oil (eg, linseed oil, regardless of > thickening technique) recipe has worked. Trust me, my work table is > covered with all sorts of variations on proportions and combination > sequences, including temp variations and emulsion recombinations. > > I have to confess that the thing which bothers me the most about > this subject is the fact the majority of people who respond to sealing > wax inquiries will blithely report a recipe (beeswax plus turp without > mention of a drying oil is the best example of this) without ever > trying it. If folks ever tried this, as Waldt and I have done, they > would know that not only will it NOT work (for actually sound > organic-chemistry reasons that Waldt worked out), but if you dig in > the right places in other "art material" refs, you would find that this > recipe will result in a paste every time. > > Here's our best guess as to what's going on: > Both Waldt and I do the chemistry nerd thing. We've concluded, from > our perspective as modern nerds, that modern "venice turpentine" is > sufficiently refined that it no longer carries enough oleoresin to oxidize > and congeal the medieval wax+venice turp+oil recipe variants. If you dig > into Gettens and Stout (1942) you'll find that Canadian balsam was > almost the same as Venice and Strasbourg turp, at least back when all > 3 were still available for sale. I suspect that Canadian balsam would > substitute just fine and would make the medieval recipes work, but > it's approx $150 a pint when I looked into getting some last year. I > sometimes use Canadian balsam in my lab, and all by itself it hardens > into a slightly-springy and golden-clear mass (we use it to mount things > on slides which can't be subjected to the 100C heat required to set > modern rock-mounting apoxies). It's a shame it's expensive, for my > gut reaction is that it would work. > > The Venice turp I have is sold by Talens. It is sticky and viscous, like > you would expect from a period turp. But I suspect that it's been > cleaned up just a tad or that it's a composite substance (instead of > being just straight tree-poop). Waldt and I are currently considering > "reconstituting" our postulated period turp by making a new emulsion > of the modern Venice turp (a la Talens) plus increasing amounts of pine- > derived rosin (some of the modern resins are NOT the same; go find a > good book on oleoresins and organic waxes, or score a copy of Gettins > and Stout.) > > There are recipes of 16th century vintage which use lac from India. > We've not played with any of them, because we wanted to make the > medieval stuff. The number of failures we've gone through has been > discouraging. If anyone has succeeded in making a medieval turp-based > sealing wax, please email me direct So that's how things stood in 1997. Now here are the updates: Canadian Balsam: I was wrong: the one small batch I tried came out as a paste, like all the other wax + sticky conifer goo recipe attempts. Beeswax: Period beeswax had a huge variation in color and volatile content. Color ranged from white to dark brown. Volatile content and the amount of devolatilization upon melting controlled the hardness of the resolidified wax. Waxes had enough variation in period that certain location-specific waxes were traded in the Mediteraneanin during the high to late gothic. I hope it is obvious that white, not yellow or lt. brown, beeswax is preferable for sealing wax. (refs for this available on request) Of all the waxes, beeswax has one of the lowest melting temperatures. This is important because alcohol-soluable pine rosins have approximately the same melting temp (~70C) Turpentine: Period turpentine as understood in the period art community was one of two almost identical compounds: Strausberg turpentine and venice turpentine. Strausberg turp was the sap of the Rhineland silver fir, with various tree debris strained out. Venice turp was the sap of the Italian Larch, again with particulate matter strained out. Chemically they are almost the same combination of turpenes, oleorosins and abietic acids. They differ from other tree sap compounds in their higher abietic acid content. Period turpentines are sticky and really viscous. To get what we modernly call turpentine, one would melt the tree goo to separate and condense the volatile turpene-rich components, leaving behind a solid mass of abietic acid rich rosin or "colophony." The condensed volatile portion of the tree goo is "sprits of turpentine," which is our modern turpentine. The Talon's venice turpentine mentioned in my 1997 post is more refined than its period counterpart (I asked the manufacturer) Colophony is a mutable term, just as rosin is. You can buy "colophony" from China, Russia or Mexico, but it's not the separated pine rosin that was made in period. The one definition of colophony that I like (and use) is an alcohol-soluable oleorosin derived from conifer sap. The original definition of colophony is a rosin that came from Colophon, in Asia Minor. If you want to test a commercial rosin or colophony using the alcohol- soluability criteria, you must use ethanol - isopropyl won't cut the mustard. Don't bother trying the Chinese colophony - most of it is synthetic. Melting temperature is a crucial property here. Having played with the Mexican colophony, it has too high a melting temperature to make an emulsion with beeswax. The modern synthetic resins have the same problem. Making the emulsion: melt the beeswax (in a double boiler please, or you might start a fire) slowly stir in your rosin in small peices. Don't try it the other way around - I still have that paticular failure in one of my craft drawers: what a mess! I achieved a compound with reasonable hardness using 5 parts (by weight) white beeswax (bought at a "God Shop"), one part alcohol-soluable pine rosin (from my old violin, not that I will admit to ever even picking up a violin). Less rosin doesn't harden as well. More rosin will not dissolve into the melted wax. The hardness has improved over time (I just looked it). The unhappy characteristic of the stuff is that it doesn't want to stick to paper. It will stick to vellum which has a raised nap (smooth surface won't do). It sticks to itself better than it sticks to anything else. I have not tried to make any of this stuff with color in it. I've only made one batch, and that was in 1998. It has not been tested for hot day worthiness, staining from devolatilization, or multiple melting and solidification. If anyone has had better luck, I'd really love to here about it. All things considered, more modern lac-based recipes are still superior. Lac from India hit western Europe in the 1500's, and replaced beeswax-based sealing wax almost instantly for good reasons! Cautious notes: Fumes from melting colophonies and other resins are bad for you. Long term exposure causes lung damage. In terms of SCA usage, this probably isn't a huge problem, since one would not be melting this stuff on a daily basis for several years (YMMV). The most common pigment used in period sealing wax was vermillion. Vermillion is mercuric sulfide. It volatilizes at very low temperatures, and mercury fumes are not cool, as everyone knows. No, you don't go mad as in psychotic, you go "mad" as in senile dementia. The symptom set is very close to that of Mad Cow disease. If anyone else feels like playing around with sealing wax recipes, find a modern substitute for the color red if you get as far as pigmenting a batch. All of the good refs to sealing wax are reported in the sealing wax portion of the Florilegium, so I'll not bother to repeat them here. There is one ref that's not listed in the Florilegium, and that is a historic review of sealing wax compositions published in 1970 in the Science of Conservation journal, a copy of which I own but can not access right now since I'm in Idaho and my library is mostly in California still - otherwise I'd cite the ref properly. ttfn, Therasia von Tux ___________________________________________ Reward doubled in Abernathy murder case http://www.onewest.net/~no1home/index.html =================================================================== To unsubscribe from this list, send email to with a blank Subject: line and unsubscribe scribes in the body of the message. Do not include any additional text in the body. ------------------------------ End of scribes digest V5 #72 ****************************