Waxing beams

[88v8]

In this thread, which is mainly about stripping, Toby Newell touches on methods of waxing
http://www.periodproperty.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=14003&p=192193&hilit=waxing+beams#p192193
and advises a few coats of shellac as a base.

Our downstairs beams, elm, have fortunately not been blacked, and although I can see that some of them have been whited in the past, they are currently au naturel.
I would rather like to wax them, but a trial on a few square inches has shown that even after a light sanding they are still quite rough and will indeed absorb oodles of clear Briwax, so I can see the merit of a pre-shellac.

Any other experiences of waxing or other finishes that will impart a degree of gleam?

Ivor

 

[Toby Newell]

Ivor

Do I count?

Seeing as one of my mantras is 'always corroborate information by checking multiple sources'

No. I don't.

Come on people, help Ivor out.

(To be fair, I have probably coated and waxed a few tens of miles of linear woodwork over the years, so totally discounting any other skills and experience I may or may not have I possibly count for more direct experience than one person)

The beams below took me several months and resulted in me getting RSI and losing 6 months salary with no sick pay but that was the scraping, the finishing was fine, 5 or 6 coats of shellac as I recall and one or two coats of Mylands beeswax and canauba.

As I say here:

http://newellwoodworks.co.uk/guide%20to%20wood%20finishing.html

One coat of shellac is equal to several coats of wax. Possibly more pertinent is the fact that without a soft brush and thin shellac it is hard to get the wax into all the holes and interstices without leaving unsightly lumps which will smear the surface and make removing and buffing the wax almost impossible. Possibly even more pertinently pertinent are the properties of wax. Wax is porous and is hydroscopic, it absorbs moisture (as does shellac actually! but to a far lesser extent) if you apply say six coats of wax to one bare beam and four coats of shellac and one coat of wax to another after a year or two the purely waxed beam will appear lighter and more milky, after a few years the waxed beam may look almost white and like painted with off milk (not nice) whereas the second beam may look fine. If you wanted to remedy the first beam, roll up your sleeves and prepare to strip the whole thing again. The second beam? Just gently apply fresh wax with 0000 wire wool.

Modern humans appear to think wax is a finish. It isn't. It is a smoothing, evening, cleaning and protective agent applied over previously sealed surfaces (car anyone?) Wax has virtually never been used as a primary finish, it's modern use as such is due to ignorance and misinformation, wax was used after a surface was burnished with an oil and brickdust impregnated felt cloth wrapped around a brick or wooden block a la Chippendale or after application of gum resin, copal varnish, Chinese lacquer, oil or shellac / shellac lacquer / varnish. And to satisfy the possible pedants, I am talking about non friction turned surfaces, the application of wax, gums and resins fused by heat has been used by turners of various cultures for centuries and yes, the first applied finishes were these same gums and resins dissolved in solvents to aid penetration in items, like tables, that were too big to spin around, but beeswax and canauba were superseded by drying oils and their varnish derivatives, shellac and copal resins dissolved in wood alcohol and lacquers, some of which naturally occurs in the earths crust and was used by the Chinese centuries before it was made from refined petro chemicals. So to all the architects, designers, journalists, SPAB, English Heritage, Green activists and middle class liberal jumper wearers and the majority of mankind who have a peculiar and totally modern distorted view of wax and oil finishes *ppfffffffsssthhhhh* (I don't know what the onomatopoeia is for a raspberry) read more.

I cannot remember when I bought the tin of Mylands wax below, it definitely wasn't in the last ten years, I have coated several miles of beams, skirting and several thousand square metres of floors with it and given small amounts to customers and I still have some left in the same time period I must have used 2,000 pints of shellac.

 

[Toby Newell]

Actually Ivor this was easier than posting pictures on here.

http://newellwoodworks.co.uk/wordpress/?p=491

I just popped these onto my blog.

They are all 250 to 400 yr old beams from a cottage, shellac and waxed, 200 lm in total x 3 sides. These were a mixture of elm and oak, like many old houses there were changes over the 400yrs so some of the beams are 400, 250, 100yrs old and some were new (one casement, one new) which I faked to match. Oh and there was a large pine beam in the kitchen, coloured and clear shellac and wax, 4 to 6 coats plus one or two coats wax. TBH I don't really fuss over the amount of coats, I think I quoted to apply two coats of shellac and ended up applying four, five or six, I just keep on going until an even sheen level is achieved, different beams have vastly different 'thirst' levels two or three is ok on some whilst others need five or six to get the same effect. Apply thin coats leave to dry for as long as possible (sanding is easier) the first coat can be sanded heavily back with a high quality 240 grit AlOx or SiC paper, the second coat onwards you can use a fine 180 grit sanding sponge, after a while this will wear down to almost nothing, so get a few sponges. Oh and try and leave the shellac a week if you can before waxing, the harder the better (shellac takes months to dry and wax years) then sand the shellac surface lightly and thoroughly with a worn fine sanding sponge and then apply your wax rubbing all over with 0000 or 000 wire wool, remove within a couple of minutes with an old flannel / cut up cotton t shirt or similar. You can apply a second wax coat after a day or so (a week better) then all you need to do is reapply the wax every year or two (more frequently in areas exposed to direct sunlight)

The last one is from a 550 to 600 year old cottage, the oak beams were not coloured and were almost certainly original, so 550 to 600yrs old. Too long ago to remember how many coats, several shellac and one or two wax.

Sorry for the crap pictures, they looked amazing. A centuries old hand sanded, shellacked and waxed beam is the best looking thing you can get IMO and these pictures don't look very pretty.

PS Shellacking is easier work than waxing, which has absolutely nothing to do with the reason why all French polishers and experienced wood finishers do anything to reduce the amount of waxing, probably.

The below image is the only picture I could find of the interior of 60 Carey Street behind the Royal Courts of Justice (the residence of the President of The Law Society for whom I was the wood restorer for three years) you can just see the beautiful (I think 1731 or similar) pitch pine interior which I got my colleague and good friend Mark O'Neil (sorry Mark) to wax as I was busy on another job (honest) the interior was shellacked and we cleaned and rewaxed it.

It took 6 weeks. Imagine having to apply six coats? Then imagine every few years having to strip and start again. Exactly. You would have no friends.

 

[88v8]

Toby, many thanks for taking the trouble to respond once more, and I shall read your posts again carefully when I am ready to proceed.
Given how much work is involved in doing the job properly, I can understand why no one else has replied.

I am one of those ignorants who has imagined wax as a finish. I made a loudspeaker bracket of green oak last year, applied two coats of Briwax to the bare surface, that was it. Time may bring to my attention the errors of my ways, given that the cottage has a typical summer rh of 70% perhaps not very much time.

Again, ignorantly, I equate shellac with varnish, and varnish with a quick fix unworthy of an old house, so the notion of using it as a base would never have occurred to me, and would have felt wrong if it did.

I can see that I need to experiment on an out of sight length of beam, or even some of the spare elm I have kicking around although the texture is different. We are very lucky in having bare beams with no dodgy finishes to strip, so I don't want to mess things up.

Ivor

 

[Toby Newell]

Ivor, just avoiding doing any work yesterday as I am now, so you are welcome.

Oh no, the irony! Shellac loves wood and wood loves shellac, far more than Briwax to which I hold crossed fingers up to, Briwax is awful, awful, horrible stuff, contains toluene and even the non toluene stuff contains toluene derivatives, totally hateful stuff!!!

The irony being whilst shellac has been used for centuries, Briwax is formulated on chemicals only produced for finishing purposes since the 1960's, the thought that you used Briwax as being more worthy than shellac for an old house is, well, I can't think of an appropriate word!

As regards error of your ways, interior oak or elm is going to last several hundred years, possibly the life of the dwelling if heated, whatever you put or don't put on it so the only thing that matters is how you feel about it. Wax, shellac, varnish, porridge oats it doesn't matter. If you want to be all historic then it depends on whether your beams were 'show beams'. If they were then they would have been left natural, oiled or shellac and waxed, if not they may have been white washed or if more recent, coated in a bituminous finish. Rarely were items just waxed as wax is quite expensive and much more so years ago when there were no white spirits and gum turpentine was very expensive, not to mention beeswax and canuaba. Getting the same sheen level as shellac and wax with just wax might take three or four times as long and the resulting finish would be less durable and require more maintenance.

I haven't studied wax use at thesis level so it is quite possible that at some time in the past the graph of labour costs vs material costs may have converged. Finishes follow fashion as well so there may have been a time where waxing bare wood was fashionable. I haven't found much in the literature about waxing bare wood, Chippendale mentions oiling with brickdust and a felt beezer made from felt cloth wrapped brick and has recipes for shellac and copal varnish and oils as well as waxes, I have read books on Sheraton, Chippendale and some very informative C.19th American books on staining and finishing and never have found instructions to wax bare wood.

I am aware from my work that this was often done in late C.19th early C.20th by home owners who wanted to quickly protect their floors, often not sanded or cleaned! with a polish they would maybe have easily had to hand around the home, which could have been wax, rather than shellac.

Seeing as all the professional literature I have read does not appear to mention waxing bare wood maybe one could conclude that it would of been (and remains to be) the case that professional joiners, carpenters, decorators and wood finishers would maybe more likely have not applied wax to bare wood due to reasons of aesthetics, durability, cost and time but that home owners may have well used wax on bare wood simply because they would of had it lying around whereas they may not have necessarily had pots of shellac, copal varnish or oils lying around, at least in smaller more modest dwellings. In larger more expensive houses they probably employed professionals to maintain the woodwork.

If you want to get a waxed finish with a very low sheen then just apply one coat of shellac, sand back very thoroughly and evenly and apply a couple of coats of wax, what you will find is the surface result is indistinguishable from a pure wax finish but that because of the grain raising and subsequent cutting back the resulting surface will be smoother and easier to wax and the sheen more even.

As regards your 70% RH then for thin wax coatings the 'blooming' is less of a problem. The more coats you apply and the thicker the wax layer the more room the moisture has to penetrate, blooming can normally be solved by melting the top layers with turpentine, rubbing gently and evening up. I am sure your speaker brackets will be just fine. Although if you want to support slightly more sympathetic companies then maybe try switching to Mylands wax, Harrells (made by Jenkins): both London companies or if you must venture into international conglomerates then Liberon waxes (Group V33) are also good. Briwax symbolise all that is wrong with modern finishing and is the stalwart of mass produced pine furniture. Briwax make a pressure waxing system of all things to speed up the mechanisation of waxing!!! At least with Mylands, Harrells and Liberon you still require bacon sandwich fuelled man power.