An Interesting Experiment with Palm Wax

[Lah Ca]

I was doing some polishing the other day with carnauba palm wax.

There is a completely trashed Fats Domino 78 which I got from somewhere. I tried once to give it away on Craigslist, but nobody wanted it. I use it as a test record of sorts because it has so much drag now. It caused the stock platter mat on an Audio Technica turntable to bunch up under it, and the AT motor struggled to play the disk with a different mat in place. It will play on my AV machine and on my Dual turntable, but it sounds awful. It would not play on my RCA Victor portable at all. It just stalled the motor completely.

So I thought what would happen if I polished one side of this record with palm wax. I remember my brother and I sock-skating down the maple-floored hallway in my childhood home after my mother had polished it - run, stop, and slide the full length of the hall. Since I did not care about the record at all, I went and did it. The cosmetic results were startling. If the record had only been loved to death with repeated plays and not abused with gouges, scrapes, and scuffs, one could produce a reasonable facsimile of a NOS appearance. The dull grey, dusty appearance of the grooves was replaced with a gloss. Carnauba wax is safe for shellac finishes so I am not worried about any damage to the record, not that I was worried in this case anyway. The interesting thing was that the record just didn't look better, but it sounded better, too, on my A-V machine, at least - it's not going near my Dual deck now. I would be lying, though, if I said it sounded good.

And wonders of wonders, it would play on my portable. I flipped the record over to the the unpolished side, and the portable just stalled again.

I am not advocating palm-waxing records. I would imagine that the wax would trap debris and dust. Nonetheless it was an interesting experiment.

My Blue Heaven has been waxed. The other side hasn't. Both sides looked very similar before the waxing.

[fran604g]

An interesting experiment, of which we all surely have test specimens for in the "crap" stack.

Cheers,
Fran

[AudioFeline]

It seems like the record benefited from the application of the wax. I've heard reports of improved sound from the application of a furniture wax/polish spray ("Mr.Sheen"), it would be providing a lubrication.

I'm curious, have you washed the record previously - there certainly seems to be some stuff in the grooves to be contributing to the amount of resistance to playing that a wash might have removed.

[Lah Ca]

It seems like the record benefited from the application of the wax. I've heard reports of improved sound from the application of a furniture wax/polish spray ("Mr.Sheen"), it would be providing a lubrication.

Yes. The most consistently recommend product from people I would consider to be reliable is Ibota wax, a shellac-like beetle secretion very lightly applied as a powder. It is hard to find in North America. A friend living in Osaka was going to try to source some for me, but he ran out of time before he had to return home to Canada.

I have seen people recommend bees' wax also.

Carnauba palm wax paste is mostly just wax, an organic product long used for floor and furniture polishing. It is safe for many finishes. It hardens up, and on a low traffic hardwood floor it can provide protection for two years or more.

I might use palm wax again on things I cannot otherwise play, should I encounter them. I have no idea what the long term effects might be.

If one were an unscrupulous dealer, one could greatly increase the visual appeal of one's stock. The pronounced smell of the wax dissipates in a few days.

I'm curious, have you washed the record previously - there certainly seems to be some stuff in the grooves to be contributing to the amount of resistance to playing that a wash might have removed.

Yes. The record had thorough wet-washing on a vacuum record cleaning machine. The grooves still looked grey and dusty/powdery. The cleaning was done before trying it out on anything. It was still problematic.

[Lah Ca]

It seems there is some precedent for using Carnauba palm wax a a dressing. EMG had a Davey branded Carnauba product.

2023-02-03 14.55.04 www.gramophonemuseum.com 0152c55d4abe.png (427.18 KiB) Viewed 225 times

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Ref: https://www.gramophonemuseum.com/emg-accessories.html

[gramophoneshane]

I wonder, how do they know it is carnauba wax?
It doesn't state that it's carnauba wax on the instructions nor the box.
In fact it doesn't even refer to it as wax and only ever calls it a dressing.
Did they have a chemical analysis done, was it stated in period advertising, or is it just their assumption?

[Lah Ca]

I wonder, how do they know it is carnauba wax?
It doesn't state that it's carnauba wax on the instructions nor the box.
In fact it doesn't even refer to it as wax and only ever calls it a dressing.
Did they have a chemical analysis done, was it stated in period advertising, or is it just their assumption?

This is only a guess on my part. Carnauba wax has a very distinctive odour. If you have a stick of it in a sealed tube it would retain its smell.

But your excellent question is something we could put to the person/people behind the Gramophone Museum. There is contact information on their website.

[CarlosV]

There were several products intended to reduce friction on records since the 1920's, I have a French Pathé tin can that was commercialized with that purpose, with a black stuff that is today completely hardened. The Gramophone magazine had articles recommending use of paraffin (candle wax) on records. I use the ibota wax whenever I have problems to play a record with a thorn needle, with mixed results: sometimes it helps to play it through, but in other cases it does not make any difference. Ibota wax is effective to reduce friction of Pathé records, that are notorious to slow the motor down to a halt whenever the record is worn. All these materials - waxes, shellac and polishers - have the same short term effect of reducing friction, but their long term effect is not that clear. Being made of shellac, Ibota probably does not cause damage over time, while the other materials are questionable, especially the modern furniture cleaners that nobody really knows their composition.

[Orchorsol]

I wonder, how do they know it is carnauba wax?
It doesn't state that it's carnauba wax on the instructions nor the box.
In fact it doesn't even refer to it as wax and only ever calls it a dressing.
Did they have a chemical analysis done, was it stated in period advertising, or is it just their assumption?

This is only a guess on my part. Carnauba wax has a very distinctive odour. If you have a stick of it in a sealed tube it would retain its smell.

But your excellent question is something we could put to the person/people behind the Gramophone Museum. There is contact information on their website.

I have one, but at maybe 85 years old, despite the tube being screwed shut, the pieces inside don't smell of anything. I suppose I could cut a piece open and sniff it... Not sure I want to!

Maybe Chunny (Gramophone Museum) will post here in response.

[Lah Ca]

I have one, but at maybe 85 years old, despite the tube being screwed shut, the pieces inside don't smell of anything. I suppose I could cut a piece open and sniff it... Not sure I want to!

Interesting. Thanks.

Maybe Chunny (Gramophone Museum) will post here in response.

Small world, yes?

A post from Chunny (Gramophone Museum) would be most enlightening.