[Loch-Ruadh] [Loch-Ruah] Beeswaxing leather HELP!

[Sluggy!]

Hello!!!

I think you do some tooling, so be sure your leather is completely dry before you wax it or the moisture will likely cause it to stain when the wax is applied. You could leave the armor in the sun for a day or two or maybe in the oven for a while before waxing it. As long as there is significant moisture in the leather, you should probably avoid temperatures approaching the boiling point. If such conditions are not carefully controlled, it may make the leather brittle which, while probably effective against live steel, is not rattan friendly. The hardening action of water is a polymerization reaction. 

So far as I know, the wax does not cause the same reaction, hardening the leather instead by filling the pores. If there is a way to dissolve the wax without heating it, a solvent perhaps, one may be able to "un-harden" leather. Hmmmm, I may have to experiment with that.

In any case, when I did some waxed armor, I put the 99% finished pieces in the oven set to the lowest temperature, in a very shallow baking pan, with the wax pellet sitting on the inside of the piece. As it heated up and the wax began to melt, I used a rubber spatula to move the pellet around, distributing the VERY soft wax to cover every interior surface, adding new pellets as needed. I also rolled the armor around on the pan, which coated the outer surfaces as they were sitting in the puddle of melted wax on the pan. As I recall, the armor absorbed quite a bit more wax than I had expected it to.

Getting it evenly soaked in wax is a little bit of a challenge, but it wasn't too difficult. Once I was convinced it was well soaked, I turn the armor to sit on edges to drain, turned off the oven and left the armor there to drain and cool. This step greatly reduced the amount of scraping and rubbing needed to get the surface wax off.

Once it's cooled, the surface will take a fairly nice satiny polish with buffing and cutting the waxed leather is frighteningly easy. The tough resistance to your knife seems to dissolve once the leather is infused with the wax. It works more like some kind of alien fine grain soft wood than leather, yet it will absorb blunt force in stride. Inevitable scuffs in the armor from use can often be erased with the heat from a blow dryer. Armor left in a hot vehicle may deform and bleed a little wax on stuff.

Doing it over, I would make a more formfitting "tray" from heavy aluminum foil to help contain the escaping melted wax.  By the end of the process, I had soaked up the majority of the wax on the tray, but containing it somewhat would have made it easier.

If you have a LOT of wax (for example, using parafin instead of beeswax; your wallet will appreciate that, too), I think I would instead (safely; no open flame) melt a couple or three pounds of wax in a pan and pour it over the leather, recovering wax as it cools and putting it back in the melting pot. Small parts  could even be dipped.

The parafin hardened armor will probably be a little stiffer and harder than beeswax and will be missing that particularly nice beeswax scent, but the leather will look pretty much identical. Beeswax scuffs are yellowish, whereas parafin scuffs are whitish. 

I have pictures of some arms I made for Gabby some time back. I will post them somewhere and put the link here when I find them... :)

Robartach, b.k.a. Sluggy!




________________________________
From: charles armitage <charlesarmitage at yahoo.com>
To: Elfsea <elfsea at lists.ansteorra.org>; Kingdom of Ansteorra SCA Inc. Shire of Loch Ruadh <loch-ruadh at lists.ansteorra.org>
Sent: Tuesday, August 25, 2009 9:51:56 AM
Subject: [Elfsea] Beeswaxing leather HELP!


Does anyone have a good guide to how to beeswax leather armor? I'm just about done with my gear and what to protect / harden it some and picked up some beeswax thinking it would be pretty straight forward and nope, I'm lost... HELP!
 
I'm finding that putting the hot wax on the cool leather just makes a white layer of wax, am I suppose to coat the leather and then place it in the oven at 180 there by melting the wax in? Or am I suppose to mix the wax with oil and rub it in?
 
As I said I'm lost!


Ld Kylan Ulfgierrson mka Charles
"I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."