How do you wax harden armor?

Like a recipe blog, this is the part where I discuss my life story which nobody asked about.

I’ve experimented with a lot of different hardening methods over the years hoping to find the “best” method of hardening leather armor. Best is a pretty subjective term. In my case, as someone who makes and sells wax hardened armor, my best method was the one that made the leather as hard as my customers need it to be, but didn’t drive the price of the armor to unattainable heights.

At Grommets Leathercraft, we use pretty basic paraffin candlewax. It’s not that it’s the far superior medium, but it’s certainly the best bang for the buck, doing an excellent job at hardening the leather, while allowing us to keep the added cost down. Beeswax is also a very good medium to harden leather in, but far more expensive. I’ve also heard stories about the superiority of steric acid, but I haven’t tried it out (yet). I know a few guys who swear by boiling leather in water, but boiling in water forces the natural oils out of the leather, which makes it very brittle. The idea is to replace those oils with something that will stiffen the leather, but help it retain the warmth and low percussive nature that makes leather armor superior to a lot of the other modern options that are out there.

This is the part where I actually talk about how to harden leather.

We use an 8 qt crockpot to melt our wax. We generally melt it until it’s 200 degrees Fahrenheit and then put it on the “warm” setting to keep it relatively steady temperature-wise.

Warming the leather before giving it a wax bath definitely helps the wax to soak in easier, but it’s not completely necessary.

Putting an un-warmed leather piece in the melted wax just means that the wax itself will warm the leather and begin to soak in. You can see on the piece itself that the wax will actually harden and create a “shell” that will gradually melt away as the leather warms.

The rule of thumb we use at the shop is “when the bubbles stop, it’s done”. This means that when the bubbles stop bubbling out of the leather, it has soaked up as much of the wax as it can.

Leather that has been soaking in melted wax is very hot, any metal rivets or hardware that are attached to the leather will be even more hot. You should definitely use tongs and wear gloves when pulling your leather pieces out of the wax.

After the bubbles stop, we pull the pieces out of the wax. We generally give our pieces, such as this handmade leather gorget, a wipe down and place them on a blanket of paper towels to soak up any excess wax.

if we want the pieces to retain a specific shape, we let them cool down to a point where they’re comfortable to handle, and set them in the shape we want.

Once the piece cools, it will become quite rigid and stay in the shape that it cools in. You can fairly easily re-shape it by warming it up again and putting it in the shape you want.

Don’t have a crock pot specifically designated for melting wax? good news, you’re not totally screwed!

Long ago, we used a hot plate and double boiler setup to melt our wax.

The double boiler was too small for any armor pieces bigger than some elbows, so we used a hefty paintbrush to paint the melted wax onto the armor pieces and warmed it with a heat gun (or oven set to 200⁰) until it seemed as though no more wax would soak into the leather.

It’s a fairly time consuming way to do it (and still the way we use for larger pieces), but it definitely works, and it’s a bit more manageable for someone who isn’t doing full production scale leather hardening.

If you have any questions, or need clarification on anything, feel free to send me an email. If you’d like to tell me how wrong I am and explain the correct process to me, feel free to send Matt an email.