bees wax finish

[Stiks-n-Strings]

Any one ever use pure beeswax to finish and seal a self? If so how did it hold up and what was your process of application.

[John Scifres]

I have used it but can't really attest to durability on a reglarly hunted bow.  It is easy to apply and refresh.  Simply heat the bow and rub it in until no more will soak in.  It looks beautiful on osage.

[J. Holden]

John, what do you use to heat the bow?  Heat gun, iron?  Thanks.

-Jeremy  

[J.F. Miller]

heat gun works well for me.

[MoeM]

You can melt it together with colophony (like for violin bows) so I mixed myself some stringwax some time ago.
I think about 4 parts beewax to 1 part colophony to improove the adherence.
I use it sometimes to polish waxed risers of glass laminated bows.
I heat the block and rub it onto the wood then I wipe off the excess with a polishing cloth.

[John Scifres]

Yes, heat gun.

[Stiks-n-Strings]

John if it's good enough for you it's good enough for me.

 A buddy of mine has been coming by now and then and learning to build a bow. I think it's gonna be a good one! He wants to use bees wax on it so I told him I would find out.

 Thanks!

[eflanders]

Will all due respect to John and others here, be a bit cautious on using a heat gun as it can quickly overheat the wood.  This could harden or soften the wood fibers.

Might I suggest that you use a common hair dryer (they don't get nearly as hot) to heat the wood.  

All you want to do is to heat the wood good enough to get the wax to penetrate / melt into the wood.

[k-hat]

I used the blow dryer once like you said, I'm way too impatient!!  The wax rehardened way too fast for me to wipe/polish it.  I switched to the heat gun at low setting keeping it a good distance.  I understand your caution, it would be REAL easy to screw up a back with the gun.  

Guess i'd rather take the chance  

[John Scifres]

Good point on the heat, just warm it up a bit.

[J.F. Miller]

yes, one should excersize good judgement when melting wax into bow limbs. the same kind you would excersize during the other 95% of the construction of a wooden bow. seems like one would have to be extremely careless to do any harm.

eflanders, I've applied various wax finishes to bows to seal to seal them. beeswax, paraffin, various combinations thereof, and others, and I get the wax and the wood plenty hot. has never caused an noticeable difference that I've ever seen or felt. could you please explain how overheating would soften or harden the wood? seems like it might do one or the other. actually it seems to me that it would only harden the wood, as if tempering, which according to what I read here is nothing but wonderful.

[eflanders]

I'm not an expert on tempering wood but I will do my best to explain how heat can both soften or harden wood.  The best explanation on all of this is found in the The Bowyers Bible #4.

To straighten a crooked limb or bend wood one common method used is to heat the wood until the wood fibers soften enough to make the change.  This can be done with dry heat or damp heat (steam).  Steam heat is usually the preferred method for this process.  It is rare for the wood to darken in this as you do not need as much heat.

To harden wood, the cells of the wood need to be heated enough to dry out the moisture contained in the wood cells.  It can only be done with dry heat.  The easiest easy way to know if you have heated the wood enough to harden it is to compare the color of the wood as the wood will darken once the moisture has been driven out of the individual wood cells.  The trick in this is to make sure that you drive out the moisture without actually (burning the wood) damaging the wood cells.  There are some bowyers that will supplement the hardening process (commonly called "heat tempering") by adding wax or oil to the heated wood after it has changed colors but while the wood is still hot. (This supplement process works better with some woods than others.)

By the way, early Native Americans commonly hardened the ends of their wood arrows in their camp fires for durability.