For the latest project I am working on it was strongly advised to run the thread through beeswax for some of the hand sewing parts. I did not have beeswax and needed it now, so online shopping wasn’t an option. The two stores in Leiden that sell sewing related stuff do not stock it, but one of the shop owners directed me to a drugstore. I would never have thought of going there, but lo and behold, they sold beeswax. Although not really in the shape I was looking for:
However, this was probably the closest thing to a solid piece of beeswax I would be able to find on short notice so I bought some. After all, beeswax is used to make candles, so it melts easily and can be moulded into a different shape.
For the next bit of this post I should probably add the disclaimer that you should not try this at home.
Melting beeswax seemed like a great idea, but how do you do that? At first I thought of melting it au bain marie but I didn’t want to use any of my kitchen bowls because I want to be able to continue using those for food preparation purposes. A Google search on “melting beeswax in the mircrowave” quickly cured me of that idea.
In the end I put the beeswax in a jam jar and started holding it over boiling water with a serving thong. This did not work all that well because the thong did not have a very good grip on the jar. To be honest, this part probably was slightly dangerous. Instead I placed the jar in hot but not boiling water and moved it around a bit with the thong. The beeswax melted quickly and as soon as it was ready I put on oven mitts to protect my hands and poured it in a mould I had prepared before.
For the mould I used a waxine light cup that I lined with baking paper. Some of the beeswax ran below the paper but I could quite easily coax the piece of wax out after it had cooled so perhaps the paper wasn’t even necessary.
Does my self-poured piece of beeswax work? You bet it does! And I probably have enough pellets left to make at least 4 more pieces…
Another time, put the pellets straight into the mould, and then use a hairdryer! It takes a while, but is much less dangerous than the boiling water method.
But then I would have to buy a hairdryer first!
Ah, well, perhaps not such a good idea. Could you borrow one?
I expect the piece I have now to last a while so perhaps I’ll own one by the time I need to make more? Although it might be funny to ask someone if you can borrow their hairdryer because you need to melt some beeswax. 😉
I think if I got a request like that I’d be quite interested and would ask what it was all about…
Incredible! Never would have thought of this – thank you both!
del
I think it was probably also cheaper than buying the beeswax that is intended for sewing purposes…
I just bought some beeswax candles, the sort you used the mould from
Now that was clever!
You can do a lot of handsewing with that much beeswax!
Yes, I expect this to last for years!
Beeswax for sewing purposes is so hard to find in The Netherlands! I also melted my own, starting with a gigantic chunk of Slovakian beeswax. I used cookie cutters and now I’m the happy owner of floral-and heart shaped beeswax!
Yes, I can’t really remember ever having seen it in shops here, but I thought that might also be because I never specifically looked for it. The different shapes sound really cool! Perhaps I’ll have to give that a try next time!
such a cool idea.
Thank you 🙂