Sooting A Wax Seal Impression From A Signet Ring

[yachtsilverswan]

Sooting a Wax Seal Impression

 

I’m following up on SamCapote’s tutorial on sooting wax seals, found here: https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/index.php?/topic/218152-the-eagle-has-landed-wax-seal-arrived/page__pid__2305628&do=findComment&comment=2305628

 

Dexter Seals sends a wax impression along with every finished Signet Ring and Desk Seal. To best resolve the intricate detail of their hand carved seals, Dexter “soots” the seal before making the impression in white wax. The black soot sticks to the hot wax and helps highlight the three dimensional details of the carving.

 

But Dexter does not include instructions on how to duplicate their sooted wax impressions.

 

I’ve modified SamCapote’s instructions for what seemed to give me best results.

 

1. This involves smoke and fire, so work outdoors on a protected surface away from other flammables. Have a fire extinguisher handy.

 

2. I set up on my back deck, working on a glass topped table.

 

3. Materials needed:

a. Cotton balls, found in any drug store

b. 3-in-1 oil, found in any hardware store

c. 2 cocktail glasses – one empty, one filled 2/3 with water

d. large long screwdriver

e. Windex and paper towels

f. butane kitchen torch, found in any kitchen supply store

g. Large Pyrex (or otherwise heat resistant) baking dish

 

4. Place a single cotton ball in the middle of the Pyrex baking dish

 

5. Apply 10-20 drops of 3-in-1 Oil to the cotton ball (SamCapote used 3 drops – I found I needed more soot from a longer flame)

 

6. Light the oiled cotton ball. This will produce an oily flame up to six inches high, tipped by black oily smoke.

 

7. Slip the signet ring onto the long screwdriver (or barbeque fork), and hold the ring ABOVE the flame in the black smoke. The ring face will automatically rotate downward toward the sooty smoke.

 

8. The sooting will take the entire life of the flame to complete, and the face of the ring should look evenly black – two to four minutes.

 

9. Smother the remaining embers with the downturned empty cocktail glass. Then immerse the residual cotton in the second cocktail glass under water to be sure any hint of an ember is doused.

 

10. The ring may be hot, so slip the ring off the screwdriver into the Pyrex baking dish to cool. Try not to leave the sooted face of the ring face down – the soot rubs off very very easily.

 

11. The ring must fully cool before use as a seal. I thought of chilling the ring in the freezer, but I thought the freezer condensation would wash away the soot. I waited 10 minutes for the ring to cool to room temperature. (Normally, when not sooting a wax seal, I put several ice cubes in a small dish, cover the ice cubes with a paper towel, and rest my signet ring face down on the paper towel over the ice. The paper towel wicks away excess water, and the ice chills the face of the ring for a crisper impression.)

 

12. Wash and dry your hands – they likely have some soot on them – and the soot on your hands will dirty the envelope or stationery you are using.

 

13. Prepare the wax puddle for the seal. Use the butane kitchen torch, aimed parallel to the table to heat the tip of a wax stick. I prefer Atelier Gargoyle’s bone or white. Dark waxes will not show the advantage of the sooting. I make a large thick oval puddle, larger than the size of a quarter and about the thickness of a silver dollar. Stir the puddle with the wax stick until you feel the puddle beginning to thicken.

 

14. Then press the sooted signet ring face into the wax – hold steady – and count to seven (seven seems to work best for me).

 

15. Steady the envelope or stationery sheet with one hand and pull the ring straight out of the wax with the other hand – no rocking.

 

16. The ring (or desk seal) cleans up very very easily – just a rinse under the faucet and a dry with a paper towel and all the soot is gone.

 

17. Let the seal set overnight before mailing.

 

An un-sooted wax impression:

http://i477.photobucket.com/albums/rr131/yachtsilverswan/Waxsealunsooted.jpg

 

And the sooted wax impression:

http://i477.photobucket.com/albums/rr131/yachtsilverswan/waxsealsooted.jpg

 

The less sooted wax impression Dexter sent along with my signet ring (basically, they used less soot for a grayer coloring):

http://i477.photobucket.com/albums/rr131/yachtsilverswan/photo-1.jpg

 

http://i477.photobucket.com/albums/rr131/yachtsilverswan/photo-3.jpg

Edited May 4, 2012 by yachtsilverswan

[SamCapote]

I missed this thread until now. Couple things I would offer as alternatives in your adaptation. I suspect that Dexter uses another lighter color of smoking oil. They told me it was a paraffin oil lamp, but most lamps don't smoke all that much or people wouldn't want to use them for other purposes.

 

1) I only take a pea sized pinch of cotton (or even smaller) which is why you only need 2-3 drops of oil. This burns for about 1-2 minutes, but doesn't produce copious amounts of flames or smoke, so I can do it indoors with very little smell produced. I started in the laundry room with a side air vent fan, but have done the last 20-30 at the kitchen table without noticeable problems. I just press anything flat (even the match box) down on top of the cotton piece to immediately extinguish the smoke/flame when I'm done.

 

2) I find that the lighter coating of soot gives a nice contrast against many lighter colored waxes. The darker, heavily sooted look may have its own appeal, but I wanted more of a detail enhancement, and don't want to subject a seal to significant flames or smoke. It is also not necessary to have your soot coating completely even to give the effective contrast effect.

 

3) The smaller cotton piece & flame gives a negligible amount of heat, and I hold the seal well above any flames--waving back and forth in the smoke a few times, look at it, and focus lighter sooted areas for a second round of wavings. It takes no more than 20 seconds in the smoke, and the seal can be used as soon as I have the wax ready.

 

4) I find the lighter sooting brings out a better gradient emphasis of 3-D sloping items such as your waving flag, or the billowed sails on my ship.

[professionaldilettante]

Smoking your seals can actually be done with just a plain old tealight or any candle. Just hold your seal right at the tip of the flame, right where there isn't any more light generated, and rotate. The combustion is still happening, but with the seal in the way, forms more soot. It's hot, move fast! If you aren't ready for toying with your fingers so close to the fire, use the back of a spoon to practice to see how close you need to get to get some soot deposited.

[inkstainedruth]

You probably want to do this in the yellow part of the flame, not the blue part down at the bottom.

A few years ago we had these sort of, um, barbeques (yeah, that's our story and we're sticking to it ) at our house, where a friend of ours showed a bunch of people how to make a 12th century style furnace to smelt iron. We started with ferrous oxide, from -- if you can believe it -- a place called Pennylvania Magnetite Company (the guy we talked to thought we were nuts; also wanted to make sure that we *weren't* making fireworks). The stuff is normally sold by the truckload because it's used in scrubbers in smokestacks, and we were only trying to buy a couple hundred pounds... so he wasn't quite sure what do to when we actually showed up to the company, which was less than an hour from where we live.

Some people at the "Burn-Out" discovered that if you stuck a steak into the blue part of the flame coming out the top of the chimney (the furnace was made with a mixture of clay -- dug from our backyard -- and straw) you could get a really nice quickly cooked steak in under a minute with no charring, because the blue part of the flame has no free oxygen molecules floating around (OTOH, that's because it's carbon monoxide....). Oh, and I think the flame temps were about 1200° or more....

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[SamCapote]

Sorry, but I'm not putting "my precious" seal in any flames, or even heating it up to any degree.

[professionaldilettante]

Sorry, but I'm not putting "my precious" seal in any flames, or even heating it up to any degree.

Well, your lungs, your seal, and your process. The seal wouldn't even get hot, being in and out in a couple of seconds, just above the flame. Just less complicated.

[PENitent]

Why not just press your seal into a darker colored stamp pad and then make an impression. Gives the same appearance. Another way to make seals really show is to create the seal then use a rubber eraser and stamp pad to lightly color the high points.

[SamCapote]

Why not just press your seal into a darker colored stamp pad and then make an impression. Gives the same appearance. Another way to make seals really show is to create the seal then use a rubber eraser and stamp pad to lightly color the high points.

 

Tried that, and not at all the same gradation as using the smoke...not to mention I don't want to subject 'my precious' to stamp pad ink. For example another ship seal I got from Ebay pressed on the gold stamp pad in this post shows either full ink, or wax--without shadowing gradation that you see on the smoke version here.

[PENitent]

Why not just press your seal into a darker colored stamp pad and then make an impression. Gives the same appearance. Another way to make seals really show is to create the seal then use a rubber eraser and stamp pad to lightly color the high points.

 

Tried that, and not at all the same gradation as using the smoke...not to mention I don't want to subject 'my precious' to stamp pad ink. For example another ship seal I got from Ebay pressed on the gold stamp pad in this post shows either full ink, or wax--without shadowing gradation that you see on the smoke version here.

 

 

I think this might be a YMMV sort of thing. And I can imagine the amount of organic junk in soot/smoke is probably on par with stamp pad ink!

[SamCapote]

Why not just press your seal into a darker colored stamp pad and then make an impression. Gives the same appearance. Another way to make seals really show is to create the seal then use a rubber eraser and stamp pad to lightly color the high points.

 

Tried that, and not at all the same gradation as using the smoke...not to mention I don't want to subject 'my precious' to stamp pad ink. For example another ship seal I got from Ebay pressed on the gold stamp pad in this post shows either full ink, or wax--without shadowing gradation that you see on the smoke version here.

 

 

I think this might be a YMMV sort of thing. And I can imagine the amount of organic junk in soot/smoke is probably on par with stamp pad ink!

 

Respectfully, there is no comparison. It's not a matter of organic junk content, rather as my previous post--linked images show, it is a gradation of shading, and then how easy, quick, and thorough the remaining soot can be cleaned. If you have not done both, the best comparison I can give (besides the linked images) regarding the gradation possible--is using a sketch pencil vs. Sharpie black marker pen to draw an image like my Eagle sailing ship.