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Sticky wax for buffing
On Thu, 31 Jul 2008 09:40:21 -0700, in rec.crafts.jewelry eromlignod
wrote: Thanks for all the replies. I ordered some dop wax from the link you gave me. Now...what is the best way to melt it? What I'm using it for is to position some small mechanical parts onto a flat surface. I need to be able to adjust their position and let them harden in place. I would use glue, but I need to be able to re- heat the wax and re-adjust the position in the future, if needed. Will a hair dryer be hot enough to soften the wax for adjustment? What other methods are there? Don Some sort of hot plate, or an electric griddle or electric fry pan, is another method sometimes used to preheat stones and/or the wax for mounting on dop sticks. Depending on your items, this might work for you too. Lapidary workers often use a small wax heating pot to hold the melted wax in a soft plastic state, not fully fluid, from which it's easily added to the end of a dop stick. The wax blob of the stick is then easily adhered to the preheated stone, which is often preheated on a small hot plate surface of the same appliance. But as I said, people doing more of it used to use old electric fry pans to heat the stones enough so the wax would stick. And the wax is often initially adhered to the stick just by melting it onto the stick with an alcohol lamp if you don't happen to have one of the little wax melting pots. The same lamp flame can also be used to warm up the joined stick and stone a bit more to fully refine the connection. Simple tech, but it works well enough. As Carl mentioned, prepainting the surfaces with shellac (dilute it so it dries faster. You only need a thin film) gives the wax something it will stick to even if the item is only slightly warmed, since dop wax is usually based on a shellac formula... And also as mentioned, chasers pitch is another good option to consider. That's what is used to hold lens blanks for polishing in optics, I believe. Melts somewhat hotter than typical dop waxes, but gives a stronger joint too. Peter |
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