Pure carnauba wax durability?

[Tenebr0s]

I've recently started using pure carnauba wax as a food-safe coating on carbon steel. I believe it is the hardest of natural waxes, but I was wondering whether mixing it with beeswax, etc, would make it more durable (carnauba alone is pretty brittle)? I see it is almost always cut with other oils or waxes for workability at lower temperatures, but thats not really an issue for metal that can be easily warmed to the carnauba's melting point.

 

[Greenberg Woods]

So, lets go through this a few at a time.

A. No, mixing it with beeswax would not make it more durable. In general with things like this, the properties somewhat average out.

B. it wont work. Wax is simply to soft and melts at too low of a temp to work for what you are envisioning. If you carved a hot piece of meat, the wax would melt off. If you wiped it with a warm rag it would be removed. Any amount of washing would remove the coating.

 

[weo]

I'm not sure what you've used in the past, but a number of us use camellia seed oil AKA Japanese Sword Oil on our damascus kitchen knives.

 

[Tenebr0s]

I'm not envisioning anything.... I've done this, and it works. Wax on, wax off - it's invisibly thin. I'm not the first person to ever put carnauba wax on steel. I never planned on it being a permanent coating or anything.

So, lets go through this a few at a time.

A. No, mixing it with beeswax would not make it more durable. In general with things like this, the properties somewhat average out.

B. it wont work. Wax is simply to soft and melts at too low of a temp to work for what you are envisioning. If you carved a hot piece of meat, the wax would melt off. If you wiped it with a warm rag it would be removed. Any amount of washing would remove the coating.