Hopefully this may be of interest/use to other readers.

I’ve recently got into letterlocking, and as part of the ritual I’ve been in search of Bank of England style sealing wax. Its prime properties are brittleness, resulting in “snap” when interfered with (it’s for security, not pretty Instagram photos) and secondly: particularly high gloss.

Modern wax beads or wicked wax sticks have very different primary goals aimed at ease of use whilst molten and workability whilst creating the wonderful examples many people post here.

Bank of England style wax is still commercially available, but it’s not so easy to find. J. Herbin "Cire Banque" is one option, and Gutenberg Siegellack is another (my daughter lives in Vienna).

Not being one to shy from a challenge I opted to make my own. I made a concession to use crayons for the colour and as a separate project asked ChatGPT how to blend crayons to obtain authentic traditional sealing wax colours. The recipe is as follows:

* 8g colophony (melt first – it can take a while)
* 8g shellac flakes
* 2g calcium carbonate (finely ground powder as used in paper making and other crafts)
* 2g wax crayon for colour – I used some of the purple/black I’d blended from earlier experiments

I used IKEA ice trays to form the sticks of sealing wax.

I can report that this results in a very hard, glossy seal (first picture), and it snaps with a satisfying crack when bent. It is an authentic-ish formula and so is quite tricky to work with as it has very high viscosity near its melting temperature (i.e. it’s very toffee-like as it melts). I found it best to use a melting spoon rather than dripping it onto the final piece – it can take a long time to melt the needed volume from the stick and it’s relatively quick to set.

In an attempt to make a more workable wax during its melted phase, I tried a more modern recipe, heavily based on EVA hot gun glue sticks, but still having a high gloss once cooled. The recipe for this is as follows:

* EVA                     6g
* Crayon                5g
* Shellac                6g
* Colophony          2g
* Beeswax              1g

Again, this resulted in a great high-gloss finish on the final seal. See the “British Racing Green” mix in the second photo. The result though is a much more pliant seal which will not crack when bent.

Finally, I just melted a standard commercial red wicked wax stick to compare. Strangely, this did demonstrate a little unexpected gloss but only in the stamped area. I’m guessing this may be a side effect of the pressure exerted by the stamp during the cooling phase, as there is no gloss to the undisturbed surrounding area.

An experiment for the future will be to add shellac flakes at about 1:2 to existing commercial wax beads during the melt, to see if high gloss is produced in the resulting seal. Anybody already tried that?

 

Tuning waxes for maximum gloss