[Bordermarch] Tacky Wax

[Lathrop, Dave]

Greetings Bordermarch,

I'm now hyper focused on making some Tacky Wax for my bowstring construction. I can purchase some for less than $4.00, but that would be far too simple.
My formula for my tacky wax will be composed of pine rosin, beeswax, and mineral oil. I have already collected some hardened pine pitch to convert to rosin from my personal stock of pine trees. The pitch leaks from holes caused by the deadly pine beetles who have already decimated some of my trees.
I walked around the property with a mason jar and knife, and scraped the hardened pitch into the jar from the side of the trees. Rosin is produced by cooking the pine pitch to remove the volatile liquid terpenes
I do have a large cake of beeswax I use to treat some of my forged items, but it seems to be misplaced. After much searching in the local stores for some beeswax, I finally settled on a wax ring used to seal toilet bowls to the floor. The new ones are no longer pure beeswax, I think they are beeswax mixed with mineral oil.
I shall liquefy the rosin by heating it in a pan then mix in some toilet bowl wax. Since the toilet wax already contains some mineral oil, I will not need to add any to my batch. When the wax has melted into the warmed rosin I shall let the whole mess cool in some paper cups. If I get the mixture just right, the resulting cakes of wax will have just the right tackiness I need for my projects. Since the rosin adds the tacky to the wax, I can adjust the mixture's consistency by reheating and adding more or less of the ingredients.
This basic formula has been in use for centuries to make "Cobblers Wax". This wax was used to seal the lacing on bagpipes, in the construction of footwear, dubbing the feathers on hand-tied lures used for fly fishing, and sometimes called "stitching wax" by the leatherworkers.

So little time---so much to do,

HE Santiago