Silicon or Wax best to keep the rain out ?

You stand the Barbour wax tin in hot water and work the wax into the cloth with a sponge. It is finished off with a hair dryer. You might get a similar effect doing the same with a tin of good wax furniture polish, but Barbour Thornproof dressing only costs £10 a tin and isn't scented, as many furniture polishes are.

Colin BIgnell

Diy silicon re-proofing, or proofing from scratch, involves dissolving silicone mastic in white spirit and painting it on. Ultra-cheap if you have a tent to do.

Anything in a tin is almost certainly paraffin wax, so a candle would cost even less. You might need to add a little white spirit

And using your surplus earwax would cost nothing. Paraffin wax gets brittle at even cool temperatures, so is unsuitable, and most furniture waxes are relatively hard waxes softened by some agent such as white spirit. They are also likely to get brittle as that evaporates.

Any tent or similar reproofer should work but, as always, watch out with white spirit and anything that might be made of many plastics (which includes any materials based on polyethylene or polypropylene).

Regards, Nick Maclaren.

J Stone scribbled...

might be cheaper

If you're lazy

But earwax has no such solvents in, so does that mean it's perfect for the job?

Candles contain a hardening agent, such as stearin. You can buy unblended wax for candle making, but, for the small price difference, I would still be inclined to buy the proper cloth dressing wax.

Colin Bignell

Actually, most furniture waxes are at least 75% paraffin, with varying amounts of beeswax and carnauba, the latter being exceptionally brittle and virtually insoluble in anything at room temperature. The only natural wax which is more flexible than paraffin is microcrystalline, but this is too cloudy for a polish. Might well be used for tents etc though.

Soft or hard? Yellow or grey?

On the subject of economic use of wax, I was somewhat pissed off to see a single tin of ordinary shoe polish at two quid in Tesco. OK - don't actually need to buy it that often, but it seemed a lot. So I bought one from an ebay seller at £1.39 including postage. Arrived in two or three days and is fine.

(I know - surely wasted more than 61p worth of time and juice ordering it, etc.)

En el artículo , stuart noble escribió:

I'd been thinking about rubbing a white candle lightly over the soft top on my car to waterproof it, anyone see any drawback in doing this?

It isn't transparent, so it may give a cloudy appearance. A hair dryer would help it penetrate

Not greatly. It doesn't melt properly until rather above the temperature of well-regulated hair-dryers, and doesn't flow well into most synthetic fabrics. Also, its brittleness at low temperatures will cause it to flake off; you can remove candlewax from clothing by freezing and flexing (and you don't need more than

-5 Celsius).

Regards, Nick Maclaren.

Interesting. I wonder if they are synthetic fibres. Finding something to cope with the extremes of temperature on a car roof might be a challenge.

Almost certainly, unless the car is very old. No, it's not a problem in the UK, because both nylon and polyester can handle boiling point, and we don't get enough sun for even a black roof to exceed that.

Unless you park in the wrong place in London :-)

Regards, Nick Maclaren.

As the efficiency of tent waterproofers, they probably work well, but beware, I tried to waterproof a hat using a well known spray after which the hat stank to high heaven :-(

Bill

I opened a tin today to find it gone hard. Is paraffin suitable to soften i t?

NT

In article , snipped-for-privacy@care2.com writes

Put the tin on the hob on a low heat, heat gently until the polish melts. Let it cool, and it'll have recovered its softness.

or will have caught fire, or will have set harder than ever as more solvent will have evaporated