Renaissance Wax for rust protection?

Renaissance Wax is designed to be easy to apply and easy to buff off-on items that are not exposed to a lot of use or handling.
Neutral paste shoe polish is cheaper and protects better.
 
Frog lube is awesome for a lot of things, but it gets weird with long term storage. If you leave it on its any thickness at all it gums up into a sticky difficult to clean mess. Once I saw it do that to one of my knives I stopped putting it on my guns unless I'm using them a lot.
 
Sheep's wool fat aka Lanolin works great on metal wood horn and bone.
Get the organic one or medical grade and there aren't any insecticides in them. Many nursing mothers use it to protect their nippels thus it ought to be safe for the babies.
 
Renaissance Wax is 'best' in that it contains carnauba. IMO, the best basic 'wax.' Not sure of the rest of its composition but, no doubt in my mind, some of what you pay for that little spit can of it is no more than marketing...."museum grade" and "long-term storage."

What tests I've seen have showed as much fail with it as other products---the famous comparative "wall of rust protection" grid that went around YouTube a while back, where about twenty of the 'best' products were tested against moisture and salt water. As I recall, WD-40 beat most if not all of them.

IMO, any good car polish will provide as good or better protection on steel. Much cheaper and usually at-hand too. I'd like to see NuFinish car polish vs. Renaissance Wax on, say, 1095 steel. Would be interesting.

The key with any of it, car wax, shoe polish, lanolin....Chapstick....is that you have to DO it now and then. Don't let em sit for years.
 
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I just use Renaissance Wax on the handles and bolsters of my traditional knives to bring out the beauty of the natural handle materials - bone, stag, wood. I never really considered it as a rust preventative for blades. I use a little light mineral oil for that.
 
jpm2 said:
I'm intrigued by the Cetaphyll skin cream. Was it used just for odor?
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No, Cetaphyll is a dermatologist recommended skin cream for folks with severely dry skin, and conditions that can cause it. There's no perfumes, dyes, nothing that triggers allergies. So I figured there wouldn't be anything in it that screws up heavy leather, sheathes, jackets...it really does a bang up job on the new raw leather sheathes like BLACKJACK uses. Go easy, don't overdo it. I've also considered using it as a base carrier for leather dyes, no alcohol. I just put 3 thin coats on the bare raw leather to soften it a bit and darken it. After I got through with the stuff I listed above, the sheath has an old chocolate brown ball glove look. No rotten stitching, not greasy, no cracking. Old Vietnam Randal era look. Wrapped some hunter green paracord. That Blackjack HALO ain't a Randal, but it is convex ground A2, sharp as a razor, easy to maintain and I didn't have to spend $700. I'd love to have the Randal 14 with the 8 inch blade, but this'll do until....
 
EChoil said:
Renaissance Wax is 'best' in that it contains carnauba. IMO, the best basic 'wax.' Not sure of the rest of its composition but, no doubt in my mind, some of what you pay for that little spit can of it is no more than marketing...."museum grade" and "long-term storage."

What tests I've seen have showed as much fail with it as other products---the famous comparative "wall of rust protection" grid that went around YouTube a while back, where about twenty of the 'best' products were tested against moisture and salt water. As I recall, WD-40 beat most if not all of them.

IMO, any good car polish will provide as good or better protection on steel. Much cheaper and usually at-hand too. I'd like to see NuFinish car polish vs. Renaissance Wax on, say, 1095 steel. Would be interesting.

The key with any of it, car wax, shoe polish, lanolin....Chapstick....is that you have to DO it now and then. Don't let em sit for years.
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I've wondered the same, I hear guys use it as an additive to the walnut shell grist for vibrating brass polishers for reloading....Hikok45 for one. You gotta watch Lexol on leather for knives. It blacks carbon blades
 
tikkidaddy said:
No, Cetaphyll is a dermatologist recommended skin cream for folks with severely dry skin, and conditions that can cause it. There's no perfumes, dyes, nothing that triggers allergies. So I figured there wouldn't be anything in it that screws up heavy leather, sheathes, jackets...it really does a bang up job on the new raw leather sheathes like BLACKJACK uses. Go easy, don't overdo it. I've also considered using it as a base carrier for leather dyes, no alcohol. I just put 3 thin coats on the bare raw leather to soften it a bit and darken it. After I got through with the stuff I listed above, the sheath has an old chocolate brown ball glove look. No rotten stitching, not greasy, no cracking. Old Vietnam Randal era look. Wrapped some hunter green paracord. That Blackjack HALO ain't a Randal, but it is convex ground A2, sharp as a razor, easy to maintain and I didn't have to spend $700. I'd love to have the Randal 14 with the 8 inch blade, but this'll do until....
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Interesting, I'll have to give it a try on my next leather project, thanks.
We have tons of it around the house for fire ant bites ...
 
I used to coat all my knives with Ren wax, but then some of them rusted very badly and developed cracks in the handles
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Yes
I think it matters where you live and humidity and salt in the air etc.

Probably the ultimate is to use something like T-9 and wash it off, sort of, before use.
Wax is not such a good moisture barrier when thin. It is porous.

You could use mineral oil but it stays goopy/wet. But then so does WD-40.

I like and use Renisance wax on my woodworking tools, mostly to cut down friction while in the cut on the sides of hand saws and for the guide surfaces of the tools like hand plane soles and table saw table tops and fences to cut down friction. I live in the high planes desert of Colorado so not much prob with rust here and can't hardly be further from salt air than here.
 
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