Thanks Rod, sounds pretty good. :cool:

A thin film I would guess and not a heavy glop dripping with the stuff :?: How does fabric you want to stay reasonably clean react to light contact with armour coated with this ? I guess it depends on it being more like a dry waxy finish or an oily feeling finish.

Sort of the poor man's renaissance wax. ( A bit costly, the renaissance wax that is, but it is " museum quality stuff " that won't damage stuff or react with art objects i.e. change colors or chemically react etc ........ )

When those " museum " standards are not an issue regular car wax might be a good substitute to renaissance wax.

In the case of the olive oil and bees wax do you think it work even better ? I get that impression from your post.

Renaissance wax seem great if you don't have to handle the object much, but I don't know how protective it is or sticks to the surface when handled a lot. Comparatively speaking, how often does one have to rewax with the olive oil & bee's wax mix ?

Sorry for the blizzard of questions. :eek: :lol:

If it's that good maybe someone should make and market it. ( How messy is it to make anyway ? )

Oh, SAFETY QUESTION: Any danger of spontaneous combustion with rags coated with this ? I would assume no, but had to ask. ;) :lol:

Hi Jean,

Jean Thibodeau wrote:

If it's that good maybe someone should make and market it. ( How messy is it to make anyway ? ) Oh, SAFETY QUESTION: Any danger of spontaneous combustion with rags coated with this ? I would assume no, but had to ask. ;) :lol:

Not much real point in marketing it. It really is trivially easy to make. I use the stuff on leather and have found it's a great restorative. It seems to last longer than the commercially made lanolin-rich goop I use on really dry leather.

I make mine up by melting the beeswax in a tin can held in boiling water. You can do it directly over the stove but beeswax has a low melting point and a low flash point so I wouldn't advise it. Once the wax has all melted just add the oil and pour into a convenient container to cool. Once you're done you just toss out the tin can so there isn't even much cleanup - provided you haven't spilt it on the countertop and stove :)

Safety-wise there shouldn't be any issue with spontaneous combustion since it isn't exothermic on drying. AFAIK linseed oil is the only thing you have to worry about that with.

What's your time worth to you? For $30 you can buy off-the-shelf, museum-standard protection for your collection and likely never run out of the stuff. Even if you wax your collection obessively, if you're following the instructions it'll be a very long time before you use up a jar of Renaissance Wax. If you figure your time is worth $15 per hour, at minimum, you can't beat RW if it takes you longer than two hours to find ingredients, prepare and store the DIY protectant. And that's assuming that what you come up with will be as stable and protective as the museum-tested stuff, which isn't likely. Seems like false economy to me, and I'm a DIY afficionado. :confused:

Where is a good place to get Renaissance Wax?

I got mine from MRL:
http://www.museumreplicas.com/webstore/eCat/m...e_wax.aspx
It's a cheap way to get on the MRL mailing list, if you're not already.

Not false economy for me, we don't get Renaissance Wax here in Oz that I am aware of.

Rod;

Here is where I got my renaissance wax: http://www.highlandwoodworking.com/index.asp?...rodID=1304

Don't know how the home made product compares to the Renaissance wax ? One thing the renaissance wax is very good for is that it has very high standards where you can safely use it on expensive and delicate originals without worrying that some unfortunate reaction might damage a work of art or change colors ( Yellow a painting for an example. )

Sean;

One thing though is that armour worn outside would / should take large amounts of wax because of large surfaces and repeated applications because of very active use. ( My economy munitions armour would be what I would use this on mostly and save the expensive stuff for the " expensive stuff ". )

I know that the Renaissance wax is very effective with a display piece that is not handled or only handled gently.
I have no idea how much handling it takes to remove the protective effect of the Renaissance wax.

The home made stuff doesn't sound like it is very time consuming to make and a large batch should last months or years?

Another factor is does the olive oil mix turn rancid after a long time or does the wax stablelise it ?

I'm just looking for +/- of each and just curious and asking questions.

International shipping charges would certainly change the value of the RW, but it does seem to be available in Australia in some fashion.

These folks are using it:
http://amol.org.au/recollections/2/2/10.htm

They might be ordering it in large quantities direct from Picreator, though. Even so, they might be willing to sell you some. This stuff is so widely recognized as the conservation standard that I'll be shocked if it isn't commercially available in Austrialia. One .au site suggests checking with bookbinders. I'd suggest checking with auction houses/antique dealers as well. Best of all, call a local museum.

By the way, I certainly meant no offense with my earlier comments. I love to see folks doing things for themselves. But RW really isn't very expensive when you consider how long it lasts, and it was created because other waxes (including beeswax) were found to be hazardous to materials in longterm usage. DIY protectant isn't likely to harm reproduction collections, but there's always the chance....

Olive oil can combust as it dries I am sad to say. A friend of mine used it exclusively to care for his armor. His trailer burned down and the fire marshall determined that the olive oil had started his armor bag and gambeson on fire and then it went from there. He got told that any organic oil will behave exothermically as it dries. No idea what he uses to care for his armor now.

Even after hearing this news I can assure you that I'm not swearing off Pesto sauce or cooking with it :). I'm just not going to use it to oil my armor. I imagine that his gambeson acted like a huge candle wick or something similar.

I use gun oil at the moment but after reading this thread now I have some lower cost ideas. Thank you everyone!

I've used Ballistol now for several years and have been very satisfied with its properties. I use it on leather as well as metals with good success. It does a good job of polishing up brass and bronze too. I prefer it as an oil since it's natural and not caustic. The only downside is my wife hates the smell of it. (personally I think it's one of those nice "man" smells) It also works well as a cleaner/lubricant on firearms so it has an added versatility for me personally. I'd consider using RW on pieces that aren't going to see much handling, ie. hanging in a display over the longterm. Other than that I'm just to old-fashioned I guess. I just can't get my head around waxing my weapons like my car. :D

www.ballistol.com

Sean;

Hmmmmmm: I've probably been using way too much of it at each application, but even then my original tin is 2/3 full after more than a year of using it.

The way you say to use it would be to take the shamy rag I use and store in the can almost as it is from just being in the tin and maybe just rubbing a tiny fresh amount on it ! In that case it should last years. :eek: :lol:

Oh, you may have seemed a little " tense " or " intense " a couple of messages back at first reading but that's mostly just the problem with online communications. ;) On second reading I just decided to " unknot " my shorts and not read anything into it. In any case your contributions / opinions are always interesting and useful.

No problem at my end. :cool: And I hope you take my humour for what it is " humour " : Good humour in fact. ;) :cool: :lol:

( Note: In French good humour " BONNE HUMEUR " actually mean being in a particularly good mood: So my joke is actually a cross languages PUN. )

Oh, the combustibility problem seems to be as it's drying( DIY) if I understood correctly: Once dry on a metal surface it " might '
be safe. I would wet and throw away any rags quickly or just use toilet paper and flush it after use. On the other hand a gambison becoming a wick sounds NOT GOOD if one walks around an open fire. YIKES :eek: