wax (again)

[Raymond]

A) Some coins show lots of detail when wet.  Pull them out and examine them under a hot lamp and they turn greyish, powdery almost, losing definition.  How's about oiling them before waxing? or no oil required and the wax will restore the "wet" look? 

B) Some porous coins seem to drink the wax and never buff to a shine. Wax more buff more?
Raymond 

[Scotvs Capitis]

A) Some coins show lots of detail when wet.  Pull them out and examine them under a hot lamp and they turn greyish, powdery almost, losing definition.  How's about oiling them before waxing? or no oil required and the wax will restore the "wet" look? 

B) Some porous coins seem to drink the wax and never buff to a shine. Wax more buff more?
Raymond 

I use paste floor wax (money saving trick I learned here and confirmed at the museum I once worked for, and the sculpting dept in college) , so it may have different properties than Ren wax. I warm the coin, use cotton swabs, and apply the wax to the warm coin (very warm, almost too hot to handle, because they cool quickly) The wax does indeed sometimes penetrate a porous, chalky patina and gets absorbed in, I use more wax at that point. The wax not only darkens the patina as if it was wet (sometimes deseried, sometimes not) it tends to strengthen those delicate porous patinas.

And I have had more or less hit or miss with buffing these difficult coins. Generally if I want to pull out the shine, I'll dry wax it once I have done a hot wax treatment.

I don't know if Ren Wax darkens the coins like paste wax does if you wax with heat.

[wandigeaux (1940 - 2010)]

Ren Wax does not darken the coin (except for minute or two initially).  After drying (which is probably not the correct word), Ren Wax is invisible, unless buffed.  Cheers, George Spradling

[SC]

Raymond,

The short answer to your question is yes.  More and more if you want shine restored.

Some coins with porous surfaces or lots of that "whitish" post-soak look seem to need more wax.

My style, for a coin ready to flip, is:

1) Lightly rub on some Rennaissance wax (I strongly recommend it, it costs a bit more but is the best by far) on to the coin by finger or cloth.  (I do this cold but other heat the coin or wax.)  The wax will darken the coin a lot but that effect only lasts a few minutes.

2) Leave coin for 15 minutes or so.

3) If you think the wax has "soaked in" too much then repeat step 1.  The only way to tell this is be experience and practice.

4) Buff with felt ball/disc/barrel/bullet etc on battery powered dremel on low power.  (Have a very good grip on the coin!!!!)

The results are amazing.


Shawn

[Scotvs Capitis]

Shawn,

You are not kidding that you have to hold on carefully when buffing with a felt disc. a couple of years ago I launched a follis through the house when the disc caught a rough edge and still never found it! I was overdoing the speed. 

[casata137ec]

word of warning...well not really...warning, but I have found that photo-ing the coins after waxing can somtimes be less than satisfying, take a pre wax pic just ro be on the safe side. (the shinyness of the wax throws off the exposure, at least on my camera...or it could just be me!) 

Chris

[slokind]

Yes, use as little wax as you can.  A Danubian patina can be hard to photograph, but wax (and even worse some acrylics) is read differently by any good lens and lighting and by all flat-bed scanner lamps.  It reads whitish and it obscures relevant detail, and the sheen is such that you ought to pay us all by the hour for the trouble we have in lighting a waxed coin; the thick Danubian patina at least lights beautifully.  Photography is a wonderful diagnostician of fake patinas and bad coatings.
The 'thirsty' coins want only as much was as they will drink, and, besides, as has been repeated here, in case of subsequent BD, a waxed coin is much harder to save.  If you must wax, RenWax, at least, is not made for floors.  I think it's a distillate (just sniff it). 
Pat L.

[Scotvs Capitis]

If you must wax, RenWax, at least, is not made for floors.  I think it's a distillate (just sniff it). 
Pat L.

Ren wax is made for all sorts of good uses, leather, guns, furniture, artefacts, antiquities, jewelry, etc. 

Both Ren Wax and Minwax Paste Finishing Wax are microcrystalline in structure, which means both would have to be distillates (from oil, or to use Ren Wax's more academic sounding term, 'of fossil origin'). All commercially significant microcrystalline waxes are. I haven't yet seen a case made against using other microcrystalline waxes instead of Ren Wax that was more than preference or the intended result of good branding. Is there a good chemical or performance reason that it is better than any other besides the fact that it is marketed to our crowd?

Edited - in looking again at product safety sheets for these waxes, I noticed I have been calling it floor wax, when in fact it is "Minwax Paste Finishing Wax"