I’m looking for a recipe for an ecological cork grease with bees wax. Can someone help?
Greetings and thanks
Holger
Something that I use for all sorts of stuff in the shop is Clapham’s Beeswax Salad Bowl Finish. It is beeswax, carnauba wax and natural mineral oil. It is food safe. I have not specifically used it as a cork grease, but the consistency is ideal for something like that and I bet it would work really well. Smells nice, too.
You can check it out:
Oh dear, I’m reminded of sitting watching the late Paul Davis re-threading tenons, back in 1974. Paul lived in digs near the Portabello Rd, and had intimidated all the barrow-men into giving him first dibs on wooden flutes on the Friday before the markets. He then did them up and sold them in Ireland.
Paul really liked the softish Continental cheeses like Edam. These came coated with bright red wax. As he wound new thread onto the tenons of the old flutes, he’d melt and mix lumps of the wax with vaseline (Petroleum Jelly) in a teaspoon over the spirit lamp he used for repadding keys, and use the mix to secure the layers of thread, render them water-resistant and provide what he regarded as a good blend of slipperiness and grab.
I guess the terms Ecological and Petroleum don’t really sit that well together though!
yes, and I think, the red cheese wax is made by paraffin or so… also not very ecological
For those who want an off-the-shelf alternative, I’ve been using D’Addario “All Natural Cork Grease.” Ingredients are jojoba wax, carnauba wax, candelilla wax, organic sunflower oil, organic coconut oil, organic hemp seed oil, and organic slippery elm extract.
I wanted something non-allergenic because after playing my flute I rub a tiny amount of this cork wax around the embouchure hole area of the headjoint to prevent the wood from drying out from mouth contact. Any excess I rub around the rest of the headjoint in the belief that a slight wax coating will slow down moisture transfer and possibly…maybe… perhaps… help prevent the headjoint from cracking (it’s a fully-lined headjoint). This wax has no perceptible odor, which is nice. Wouldn’t want to alter the distinctive note of stale beer my flute usually has.
I’ve just bought the Ionareed “Cork Remedy” cork grease which is “made using bee-friendly beeswax from Dorset”, and uses “packaged in 100% recyclable packaging made from cardboard.”
I haven’t received it yet, but I don’t anticipate any issues.
bee-friendly beeswax from Dorset
How does that work? Not sure the bees the wax was taken from will think it was a ‘friendly’ action.
I have no idea.
OK, so I’ve tried looking this up, and the closest that I’ve got is articles like the following:
https://www.leafscore.com/nontoxic-cosmetics/is-beeswax-eco-friendly/
So, I suspect that what they mean by “bee-friendly” is that this is beeswax is not from a big commercial setup, no moving of hives and clipping the wing of a Queen to move her around hives (never heard of that, or of her guard bees dying), and similar. I suppose this means local small-time or hobby beekeepers.
I may email them to ask.
Whatever way you turn it, taking the food they collected and destroying the storage they built can never be ‘friendly’. It is just marketing guff.
Indeed.
It’s completely irrational, but in applications where silicone waxes are a bad choice, I’m somehow more comfortable with a by-product of the petrochemical industry than beeswax. 
I like the smell and feel of beeswax and I have a lifetime supply from the time we had a few hives (which, unfortunately, had to go when the young fella developed a serious allergy for beestings). I loved having the bees but let’s not dress up taking their honey and wax as ‘bee friendly’. What’s next, trying to flog stuff from ‘free range bees’?
Not going for the ecological angle here, nor the ethics of beeswax/honey, but I’ve long wondered if there is any reason we couldn’t use something like Burt’s Bees lip balm as cork grease, too…then you can have both unchapped lips and smooth cork connections on your flute.
Has anybody tried some form or lip balm instead of going for these specialty cork greases?
Eric
Sort of, though I have tuning slides rather than corks.
An accidental experiment revealed that lip balm works very well as slide grease, but slide grease makes disgusting lip balm. I think I posted it here somewhere – they come in the same type of lipstick-shaped container, hence the confusion.
I’ve actually used Burt’s Bees and it works fine for cork or delrin joints. I think I’ve used lanolin and Chap Stick at various times, too…
Good to know!