Here I am, again, with a brief mid-week post! Today, I’m writing about Renaissance Wax!
Since returning to the world of jewellery making, I have been using copper wire, exclusively. I’ve found it a great medium to practice with, and frankly, I’m still lacking a bit of confidence to go “gung-ho” with silver. And I’m actually starting to like the appearance of copper now! But, one thing that I’ve been really unsure of, is whether copper turns the skin green and how badly it will tarnish. The “Hulk” look is really not a good look…
I was browsing the Cookson Gold website recently (a dangerous past-time, believe me!) and I came across Renaissance Wax. It’s described as an acid-free perserving wax, developed by The British Museum Research Lab. According to the website, the wax can be used to prevent the oxidisation of metal… sounded like it was worth a try, so I popped one in my virtual basket and paid up. For the record, this wax is not cheap!
By now, I’ve made about half a dozen pieces of copper jewellery, so I figured it was a good time to experiment. I followed the instructions on the pot and rubbed sparingly… Ok, maybe not that sparingly, since I ended up with blobs of wax everywhere! Then I buffed. I did all the pieces that you may have seen on my blog in the past month or so, except the cascading necklace, where I only did the necklace chain and clasp, but left the tassels – I figured this was a good way to see if the wax really made any difference!
Here’s a video showing how I used the Renaissance Wax, and what the jewellery looks like before!
So far, I’m impressed by the wax’s ability to stop finger prints appearing on the jewellery after I applied it! I will say that even before applying the wax, I was not getting green skin. But in the UK, we are just heading into spring and warmer weather, so that may not last! Also, none of my jewellery has tarnished yet. That said, the oldest piece is only a month old at this point! I will keep you posted on the outcomes!
Incidentally, after making this video, my husband handed me these two, very large jars of Renaissance Wax that we had in a drawer… d’oh! They’re more than 3 times the size of the jar I bought!
I also ended up asking more experienced jewellers how they prevented jewellery from tarnishing. Many mentioned anti-tarnish strips… which I’m going to need to take a look into. None of them used Renaissance Wax for the purpose of preventing tarnishing. Oh well… I’ve already applied it now, might as well wait and see what happens!
One last thing before I go, whilst getting my new workshop organised, I came across this old copper pendant I made:
Newly made in 2011! 
2021
It’s not looking great, is it?! I’ll be honest… that pendant has been sitting at the bottom of my toolkit for almost a decade. Is it any wonder that it’s in that state?! So, I’d quite like the rest of my jewellery to not look like that any time soon… and so, I will keep you posted on my experiment outcomes!
