Looking for a recipe for sealing wax, can you help me?

Question

I like making my own candles at home and would like to make my own sealing wax. I like the old ones where the wax had to be cracked to open the letter. But, I haven't been able to find how to make it. Maybe it was called something else. Any information would be a great help.

Answer 1

Like so many of these "simple" recipes, there's much more to sealing wax than you might first expect.

What sealing wax does

Tom Perigrin explains this below in rather more florid language, but sealing wax should do all of these:

Mould well

The wax should take a clean impression of the signet ring or seal. Usually this requires it to shrink a little on cooling.

Be secure

Once set, the seal shouldn't be removable without destroying it.
This is a problem with beeswax seals. If the seal can be prised or melted off, it might be re-applied falsely somewhere else.

Stick well

Seals are usually applied to flexible materials like paper or parchment. They shouldn't fall off. The traditional use of a ribbon for the seal was one solution.

Ingredients of Sealing Wax
Tom Peregrin explains this (as well) in much more detail below, but put simply, a good sealing wax needs to be made from a mixture of ingredients.

Typically these are a mixture of wax and resin; usually (historically) beeswax and shellac. Shellac is comparatively recent though, a 16th century import from India. It's actually made from insect secretions (more detail here) and is still widely used for wood finishing. In medieval times, rosin from coniferous trees was used instead of shellac.

Recipes for Sealing Wax
Here's a couple of English recipes from around 1900
They're taken from the Newcastle Northern Echo's booklet, "300 Secret Trade Recipes"

Black Sealing Wax
3/4lb best black resin,
1/4lb finely powdered ivory black
and 2 oz beeswax.

Melt over a slow fire and form into sticks by rolling on a piece of glass.

Red Sealing Wax
1lb shellac,
3/4lb vermillion or venetian red,
and 5 oz Venice turpentine.

Editor's Notes:
When melting any flammable waxes, use of a double boiler is recommended. Certainly a "slow fire", or any source of open fire isn't recommended. Personally I use a thermostatically controlled electric hotplate.

Ingredients
Shellac (flakes) and turpentine (real turpentine distilled from wood, not a petrochemical spirit) are easily available from a good supplier of woodworking finishes.

Resin (pine resin or rosin) is a little harder to find, especially to find it ready-boiled, not just raw. A cheap source is just to scrape it out of freshly sawn pine boards, where it oozes out of hollow "resin pockets" on the first hot day.

"Black resin" as used here was probably bitumen. It's available today as a fine black powder that's fairly clean to handle, or a sticky mess found underground in places like the la Brea tar pits. You may also find a small piece from a road or roof repair, then pound it small in a mortar and pestle.

Venice turpentine is almost impossible to find these days, as there's no real agreement over what it is ! See the note below that discusses this further. It's a thick, viscous form of turpentine that seems to have been similar to the Canada Balsam still used today for making microsocope slides.

Colours
Ivory black and venetian red are all classical pigments. The easiest source today would be artist's pigments, as used for oil paints. Some of these still use the classic recipes for these pigments, others a modern synthetic dye. For this purpose, either should be just as good (although some artists have been worried about centuries-old preservation of their work with these pigments).

There are also a large number of red recipes using vermillion or cinnabar (if the description is Chinese), which is mercury sulphide. Don't use these unless you have a chemist's lab fume cupboard to hand! Cinnabar is not a safe material to work with, unless you know what you're doing. Modern pigments are much easier (and safer !) to work with.

Other colours
Medieval sealing wax also appeared in green. The pigment here was verdigris (copper carbonate or chloride)

From the Encyclopaedia Britannica (first ed./1771) under 'Wax':
"Sealing wax is made in the following manner: Take one pound of bees-wax; three ounces of fine turpentine; olive-oil, and rosin, finely powdered, of each one ounce: when they are well melted, and the dross taken off, put in an ounce and a half of vermillion, or red lead, finely ground, and stir them together till they are well incorporated: and when this mixture grows a little cool, roll it into sticks, or in any other form. If you would have it black, instead of vermillion, or red-lead, put in lampblack."

"The soft, red, and green-wax, used in large seals to some of our law-writings are thus made: Melt bees-wax over a gentle heat, with such a proportion of Venice turpentine as, when cold, will give it the due consistence: this is determined by repeated trials, first putting in but little turpentine, and afterwards more and more, till by dropping a piece upon a marble to cool, it is found of the true consistence. They then colour it with red-lead or vermillion, or with verditer, or whatever colour they please, the mixture in this state receiving any."

In general, vermillion will look 'brighter' than red lead, which tends to be dull and toward the orange side of red.

Answer 2

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RE:
Looking for a recipe for sealing wax, can you help me?
I like making my own candles at home and would like to make my own sealing wax. I like the old ones where the wax had to be cracked to open the letter. But, I haven't been able to find how to make it. Maybe it was called something else. Any information would be a great help.

Answer 3

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Several years ago I had some with the embossers. There is some actually made for that, (more dense than a candle). they had to be cracked to open the envelope. I think I recently saw them at a big hobby store like Hobby Lobby, depends, the stores are different from state to state, otherwise someplace that deals with stationary or scrapbooking. I am sure other ideas would work but the point was to "tamper proof" the letter,having to break the wax to open it. Good luck, you'll find it. It will look neat, now days everyone will freak out becase they won't know how to open it!

Answer 4

recipe? Just light a candle of your desired color and drip a few drops on the envelope seal. Maybe then while wax is still hot, use a coin or other fancy item to make an impression in the wax.

Answer 5

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Answer 6

I like making candles too. I would buy the sealing wax though. That is way too much work when you can go to one of the nicer stationary stores and it is ready made in many colors.

Answer 7

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Answer 8

Not sure, but there are plenty of places to buy it. It seems like it would be horribly difficult to make.

Answer 9

if you need real natural bee wax i got it on large scale from ([e-mail])
or you can skype him at bees.honey3

Answer 10

Ask your father. He probably knows.