Sustainable/Ethical wax or alternative to seal copper jewellery

[ChloeLeigh]

Hey all,

I was wondering if you had any knowledge on 'sustainable/ethical wax'. Renaissance Wax is the wax a lot of people use for sealing metals However I am not sure on how sustainable it is and cannot find much on it - apart from it has petroleum in it. I am looking for alternatives, firstly beeswax but that is not very ethical, I then looked at plant based as suggested by this blog suggesting plant based.. however there seem to be very limited available, lack of information and suggestion to bad agriculture. I am just wondering what your thought are on the different types and or if you knew of any ones yourself.

Kindest,

Chloe

[CJ57]

Hi Chloe welcome to the forum.
I'm wondering why you say beeswax isn't ethical? It's a biproduct of a honeycomb and bees don't die in the process. It's really just left over after honey extraction unless that has all changed since helping my grandad with his bees.
I use Renaissance on occasion and it's used by so many experts working in all sorts of conservation. I think it needs some form of alcohol to make the beeswax more liquid. I've made a beeswax polish in the past for antique leather and it needed something like that to make it a cream. I don't know what waxes are available for casting now, I only have a block of beeswax from years back

[ps_bond]

Renaissance wax works (although it seems it occasionally causes issues for conservators - http://cool.conservation-us.org/jaic...35-01-001.html ). No jewellery is entirely sustainable or ethical, it's all on a continuum - if you solder, you're invariably using a gas that's extracted as part of the petrochemical industry (and if it's a water torch, then your electricity usage is horrific ). Your metal has been melted, with the attendant carbon footprint. And so on, and so on.

By all means look for "better" - however you wish to define it - solutions, but if the ethical/sustainable version isn't very effective then I would advocate taking a view.

[Dennis]

Applying wax to copper jewellery does little other than sustain the lifestyle of the suppliers.
Copper will tarnish regardless, but more slowly if you use a lacquer, for instance from a spray can. Dennis