Jewelry Milling/Casting Wax?

[Grump]

A bit of a search here on the site yielded posts that mentioned the wax but no results of experimentation or testing.

Has anyone tried this? Results?

One said that the waxes are paraffin based. I believe that points to no workie as a primary wax, limit the stuff to the percentages identified as useful in the Extreme Lube Thread and related fairly recent offshoots.

I looked as some green stuff that was recovered from the aftermath of CNC milling jewelry pieces for lost-wax casting. At 220°F it's thick like honey at room temp, it can leave hair-like strings like hot mozarella from a New York Pizza, and it's hard and suitable for carving. FWIW, it feels a bit different from paraffin, or Gulf Wax at least. Extended family of jelly canners, ya know. Miss that Huckleberry jam for sure.

Safety Data Sheets are not a lot of help. IIRC, one maker (from TX?) has stuff that sounds like paraffin, another doesn't. Both I've looked up have flash points about 400°F and like beeswax no reported or determinable autoignition temperature.

Thinking of using it instead of 190-degree microwax... And trying to find out who made the stuff that's here. My son was recovering it for one of his side hustles. Barely melts in a crock pot on high.

[Grump]

Update & Info:
ID'd the maker and product and it's this: http://machinablewax.com/docs/SDS-Ma..._BLUE_F-14.pdf

One data sheet for their blue and the one I have, green F14. Guess it's proprietary on where the polyethylene content falls between 25% and 85%. More poly is probably where & how the green is stiffer/harder than the blue. But only 10-20% microwaves Narrows down the poly from the ridiculously broad published range.

I still might cook up a batch with this. Might have been Geargnasher who was melting milk jugs for polyethylene??? I might be able to repeat that failure without all the melting in tribulations I remember being described.


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[woodbutcher]

If you are looking for machine able wax,give Grizzly a try.IIRC,they have it in their catalouge.
Good luck.Have fun.Be safe.
Leo

[country gent]

One of the plusses to machineable ,casting, or green wax ( a term in industry it mat be several colors) is the elasticity and toughness that allows it to be easily carved or machined into forms for lost wax casting. Another use is in forging dies to test them and a hard brittle wax breaks and falls apart not giving a good image of the die. If your wanting to do lost wax casting then the green waxs are perfered as the carving machining marks can be rubbed out with a little finger pressure. On paraffin and hard waxs the edges tend to chip and deform when doing this,.

[Grump]

Oh, I have more than a pound of it available. At a match this weekend so buying a disposable pot and cooking up my first soap lube will still have to wait. And the mornings have finally started to cool off. Have even cast a few boolits the past few weeks.

Thanks for the insights on this stuff. One of the many things I like about our Gunnie community--so many of us are so informed about so many fascinating things.

[Shiloh]

My guess is that there is too much plastic in jewelry carving waxes. I used mostly blue for carving rings and pendants.

Shiloh

[Grump]

Well, I can now confirm that the casting/milling wax laying about my shop is indeed way too hard to use in an SL-68 style bullet lube. Too hard and crumbly to hand-lube for shooting experiments. Too high a melt point to heat up and hand-lube. So I won't be shooting any.

A possible shame, on the off chance that it might work well if run through a sizer with enough heat to make it flow. It's definitely softer than crayon!

I should have realized the gear oil would make cooking it stink so much. It may be the ONLY odor I have ever encountered that my nose does not acclimate to. I have long considered smell to be the most merciful of the senses because it has always sort of numbed itself to just about anything except skunk...and even that to me is not so bad after about five minutes. Gear oil? I could smell it for two days, no diminishing the sense, not one bit.

But overall, it seems that cooking soap lubes is not really that difficult. Our pioneers here have given us great instructions.