1. A few very old books (I really don't remember which ones) stated that shipboard sail makers used a mixture of 5 pounds beeswax, 4 pounds skimmed off grease from the boiling of salt pork thinned with 5 gallons of turpentine applied to the 'twine' they were using for sewing sails. I haven't tried this formula.
2. A similar formula that I have been using for about 5 years is: one part beeswax, one part toilet bowl ring wax and enough turpentine to dissolve it all to a consistency of yellow mustard.
3. I was looking for a wax formula to use for waxing thread in large quantities. I investigated every wax substance I could find. Eventually I picked up a toilet bowl wax ring in ACE hardware one day, read the fine print including a reference to a mil spec. I looked up the mil spec on the internet and was amazed. This stuff has a 50 year warranty against hardening (basically).
4. The mixture will last forever. I use a lot of it so I haven't tested this forecast.
5. One of the problems in using hard beeswax is that it roughs up the thread surface when you use it.
The hard wax creates more fuzz than it glues down (look at the process under a microscope some day).
6. Speed - using a thinned version of the 'formula', you can wax and dry (with a fan) a thousand yards of thread and dry it ( using a birdcage type drying fixture) in an hour (that much thread should last a few years).
7. As for the acidity, you can dissolve a 'Tums' pill (or something like it) and add it to the mixture (it is a guess as to the quantity unless you have a pH meter): if in doubt, add more. No one yet has complained about a 'base' pH deteriorating thread.
8. If you are going to dye the thread, do it before you wax it. If you use oil based pigment, mix wax and color together and you can do both at the same time.
9. There is some discussion currently about waxing. I haven't heard anyone give sound scientific evidence that it is deleterious. The rigging won't last as long as the wood in any case.
