Hand Wax / Coad

[dw]

@nickb1

FWIW, bitumen is a naturally occurring substance and has a long (thousands of years) association with human activity--everything from being used as an adhesive, to waterproofing, to embalming mummies to medicine such as getting rid of tapeworms. The Victorians ate bitumen taken from Egyptian mummies believing they would acquire some mystical life extending properties.

Some of my best handwax...best for sticking to Teklon...uses a small amount of Vesta Pech, which I am pretty sure contains bitumen.

[dw]

trying to make a "Golden" Sewing Wax from the famous W.D. John the Shoe Finisher's Guide, can someone help me with where i can find White Rosin Oil?

Just a guess but it it puts me in mind of turpentine. ??

[Anton K]

no, turpentine is turpentine, also in that book.

Rosin Oil is:

Rosin Oil.—Is obtained by the distillation of rosin at temperatures up to 350°C, and there are three varieties :
White Oil, comprises up to 60% of the original rosin. It is of a brownish-yellow colour, possesses a very strong odour but does not solidify, however low the temperature.
Blue Oil and Green Oil comprise 20% of the distilled rosin and show a characteristic fluorescence or bloom : they are more fluid than the white oils and make good lubricating oils.
All the rosin oils are insoluble in water and alcohol : they are used in compounding sewing waxes for the shoe factory.

[dw]

Well, that's interesting. I've never seen that book.

It was a fair guess on my part however, as turpentine is a distillate of pine resin, which produces rosin. Rosin is just the solid form of resin.

[das]

I have some "tall oil rosin" to experiment with, it looks/smells promising, but no definitive tests conducted yet:
https://www.forchem.com/products/tall-oil-rosin-tor/

[Anton K]

Turpentine.—Is a product of many types of pine trees : by tapping through the bark of the trees a thick oleo-resin is collected, and this is subjected to controlled steam distillation, whereby the volatile turpentine is driven off and condensed, and the solid resin left behind as a compact mass : the yield of turpentine is about 20% of the original oleo-resin. The most important grades of turpentine are the American and the French : the latter possesses a milder odour, but is usually absorbed completely on the Continent, and most of the turpentine used in this country is of American origin. This is a water-white liquid with a characteristic odour, and burns readily with a heavy smoky flame. Its boiling range is about 150-180°F, and the flash point over 90°F. Turpentine is acidic in reaction, and in conjunction with continuous oxidation it attacks most of the metals : it is stored therefore in wooden barrels, which must be completely air-tight to prevent any loss by evaporation. Turpentine is insoluble in water but mixes with alcohol, and dissolves both the mineral and vegetable oils. It also dissolves rosin and all the waxes, and has been for many years an important component of all shoe creams, boot, floor and furniture polishes. Unlike white spirit it leaves a trace of residue on evaporation.

also from that book:

Wood Turpentine.—Is prepared in America from the old pine stumps formerly left to rot, and it is now an important article of commerce. The wood is ground into a powdery form and submitted to the action of steam, the resulting distillate yielding a mixture of turpentine and pine oils. Wood turpentine is a colourless liquid which can be used in creams and polishes in exactly the same way as the more usual gum turpentine. Its odour is different and milder, and the presence of a larger proportion of dipentene increases its solvent power.

[Anton K]

I have some "tall oil rosin" to experiment with, it looks/smells promising, but no definitive tests conducted yet:
https://www.forchem.com/products/tall-oil-rosin-tor/

how can i get some to test?

[nickb1]

@dw Thanks, however, Mr Piering implies his bitumen is derived from crude oil AKA asphalt. In other posts concern was expressed IIRC that this may contain some light oils from the refining process which may be detrimental to linen or hemp threads.

[dw]

@nickb1

Well, I am very leery of refined petroleum products. And bitumen (or asphalt) can be a by-product of refining. But bitumen occurs naturally as well.

That said, as mentioned, it has been around a long time and used in shoemaking well before petroleum began to be refined for fuel and chemical by-products. Presumably it was used to waterproof some form of natural fiber in those early days of the Trade.

While I take most of what I read on the 'Net with a grain of salt...Wikipedia has, from what I can tell, a pretty good overview of bitumen--origins, chemical composition, uses, etc..

[Anton K]

So it seems there is still no truly authentic off the shelf solution.

try this one, even though i can't guarantee it's "authentic" solution (as there are so many combinations in the books), i can guarantee it works really good:
https://sattlerbedarf-shop.de/epages/c5 ... ucts/Pech2

[nickb1]

try this one, even though i can't guarantee it's "authentic" solution (as there are so many combinations in the books), i can guarantee it works really good:
https://sattlerbedarf-shop.de/epages/c5 ... ucts/Pech2

This looks identical to the pechpiering product; I would be surprised if it's not that. The pechpiering works fine, it's just that I'd prefer to use wax containing just the traditional ingredients, not petroleum-derived.

[Anton K]

not sure if i have the package left, but will try to find it and post here, there should be the manufacturer.

[dw]

What does one do with tall oil rosin or rosin oil and what is Golden Sewing wax?

[Anton K]

can't speak for everyone, but i would use rosin oil in attempt to make one of the sewing waxes,

these mixtures are " waxes " in name only, as they rarely contain
any of the well-known vegetable, mineral or insect waxes.

called "golden" sewing wax, from the W.D. John's book - the Shoe Finisher's Guide

[nickb1]

Summarising what I have gleaned from the thread. The only (probably) pure source of pine pitch commercially available in small quantities is from Gugolz. I can get this in 1kilo package in the UK, which is a lot more attractive than 25kg from the traditional boatyard suppliers. Hooray. The 1kilo pack costs nearly half much as the 25 kilo pack, I hasten to add. (If only there were more Brit shoemakers around who would go in on that.)
However, members generally report the wax from the Gugolz pitch being too brittle, flaking off the thread. The exception to this was @romango who reported satisfactory results using 1:1:1 rosin, Gugolz #73 pitch and beeswax, plus "a few" drops of oil. I shall take this conservatively to mean 3 drops of cod oil.
In theory we've been told that the Gugolz #55 pitch should be better for this application because softer, but members incl. @amuckart
still reported brittle wax. @das actually reported brittle wax with all the Gugolz variants. There seem to be many variables in making the wax, so it is difficult to know what to conclude. But I don't see from what anyone has said why the brittleness would not be mitigated by more beeswax (less risky than more oil) and possibly @dw's suggestion of some oil on the finished thread. So unless anyone has a good reason not to (please speak up!), I'm going to be ordering 1kg of Gugolz #73, some rosin from Cornellison's in London, and experimenting with @romango 's recipe. Should be fun, I'd also be up for boiling down pine tar but living in a densely populated area this would almost certainly attract unwanted attention and cause a nuisance to others, not least my long-suffering "shoe widow".

[Anton K]

@nickb1 have you ever tried this pitch http://pieplow-brandt.de/produkte/polierpech/holzpech/ ?

[dw]

One thing that occurred to me some years ago [although I have never tried it simply because I have pitch that I like (Rausch Naval Yards)] is simply to add a small amount of pine tar to your wax mix. This should add some softness to the pitch. It's almost like reverse engineering--you can boil down great quantities of pine tar to make pitch or mix a little pine tar back in with the pitch to take it a step or two back.

And FWIW, The good folks at Rausch told me that the difference between hard, medium and soft pitch was the amount of turp that had been cooked off...implying, to my mind at least, that adding a small amount of turp might alter the hardness.

Turp is volatile though...

Could be totally off base here but if you're experimenting it might be worth a try.

[nickb1]

@Anton K thanks for the link, but these guys are adding beech wood shavings to the pitch [according to google translate]. Why would they do that? Not good for the threads, I think!

[Anton K]

sorry, wrong link, i meant this one "Polierpech" http://pieplow-brandt.de/produkte/polie ... olierpech/ seems to be pure pitch. The holzpech is with "shavings", no idea with they add it, but according to their web site it serves as "amplifiers".

[dw]

@Anton K thanks for the link, but these guys are adding beech wood shavings to the pitch [according to google translate]. Why would they do that? Not good for the threads, I think!

I agree with you. But the translation calls this a "polishing" compound. So that right there ought to raise concerns. Any compound used for polishing is going to be at least mildly abrasive. In fact most commercial pitches have something added..brick dust in one case...but beechwood shavings seem a bit extreme.

[dw]

sorry, wrong link, i meant this one "Polierpech" http://pieplow-brandt.de/produkte/polie ... olierpech/ seems to be pure pitch. The holzpech is with "shavings", no idea with they add it, but according to their web site it serves as "amplifiers".

There you go...but, here again, it is made with bitumen. Probably very much like the old Vesta Pech....for better or worse.

[das]

Have not tried it yet, but am tempted to try just adding pine tar to chunk pine rosin to see if it devolves closer to pitch. Better than cooking down "X" amount of the tar to only get "Y" amount of iffy pitch, and then to go add rosin to that.

[nickb1]

sorry, wrong link, i meant this one "Polierpech" http://pieplow-brandt.de/produkte/polie ... olierpech/ seems to be pure pitch. The holzpech is with "shavings", no idea with they add it, but according to their web site it serves as "amplifiers".

There you go...but, here again, it is made with bitumen. Probably very much like the old Vesta Pech....for better or worse.

confusingly the original German text says nothing about bitumen, only mentioning "wood pitches", whereas the English translation says nothing about wood pitch only mentioning rosin and bitumen! If there is wood pitch in the product, then these guys presumably have access to pure pitch ...

[nickb1]

From the product information sheet (SDS) on Meller Optics pages (retailers of Gugolz in the US):

Chemical characterization: Mixtures
· Description: Mixture of the substances listed below with nonhazardous additions.
· Dangerous components:
8050-09-7 Gum Rosin 50-100%
8052-42-4 Bitumen 25-50%

So ... there are unspecified "additions", consistent with what @dw says because this too is a "polishing pitch". Given the %s specified there could be up to 25% of "nonhazardous additions". And secondly one would want to know the source of the bitumen.
Albeit that the product is described in these terms on the marketing pages: "an all natural product derived from wood resin (it is not a petroleum byproduct)".

source: https://www.melleroptics.com/wp-content ... _Pitch.pdf

I feel an email to the sales team coming on...

[nickb1]

maybe I'll be boiling down pine tar after all