# Sealing wax? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 8, 2012, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sealing-wax/634142 "2012-09-08T23:51:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2012, 11:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sealing-wax/634142/21 "2012-09-10T11:43:47Z")
Sealing wax has an odd, hard feel to it, very unlike paraffin or beeswax. It’s also tenacious, and can give you a wicked burn if you get it on you. Wikipedia says of its composition: [quote] Composition Formulas vary, but there was a major shift after European trade with the Indies opened. In the Middle Ages sealing wax was typically made of beeswax and ‘Venice turpentine’, a greenish-yellow resinous extract of the European Larch tree. The earliest such wax was uncoloured; later the wax was coloured red with vermilion. From the 16th century it was compounded of various proportions of shellac, turpentine, resin, chalk or plaster, and colouring matter (often vermilion, or red lead), but not necessarily beeswax. The proportion of chalk varied; coarser grades are used to seal wine bottles and fruit preserves, finer grades for documents. In some situations, such as large seals on public documents, beeswax was used. On occasion, sealing wax has historically been perfumed by ambergris, musk and other scents.[1] By 1866 many colours were available: gold (using mica), blue (using smalt or verditer), black (using lamp black), white (using lead white), yellow (using the mercuric mineral turpeth, also known as Schuetteite[2]), green (using verdigris) and so on. Some users such as the British Crown assigned different colours to different types of documents. Today a range of synthetic colours are available. [/.quote] > **[Sealing wax](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealing_wax)** > > Sealing wax is a wax material of a seal which, after melting, hardens quickly (to paper, parchment, ribbons and wire, and other material), forming a bond that is difficult to break without noticeable tampering. Wax is used to verify that something such as a document is unopened, to verify the sender's identity, for example with a signet ring, and as decoration. Sealing wax can also be used to take impressions of other seals. Wax was used to seal letters close and later, from about the 16th centur... ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2012, 12:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sealing-wax/634142/22 "2012-09-10T12:20:42Z")
> [@Floater](#): > > Wicks are for candles, not sealing wax. At least not any sealing was that I have ever used. > > Back to the OP: What other words rhyming with “tax” can you think of? Lax. Lacks. Cracks. Axe. Hacks. Backs. Plenty. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2012, 12:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sealing-wax/634142/23 "2012-09-10T12:43:53Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > I’ve seen sealing wax sticks where you light the wick to let the wax drip onto whatever paper you want sealed. Sealing wax with built-in wicks have been around since at least the 1960s (when I first encountered it) , and probably much earlier ---
**Author:** ![Bozuit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/edb3f5/32.png) [@Bozuit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bozuit)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2012, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sealing-wax/634142/24 "2012-09-10T16:51:15Z")
I used to think it was “ceiling wax” but realized that ceilings probably don’t need waxing, whereas wax might be useful to seal things. But I always assumed it was some kind of waterproof material used for sealing boats or anything else that needs waterproofing. Somehow brain never managed to find a link between the seals made of wax and “sealing wax”. It’s interesting that it’s so uncommon now that my first thought when I saw the title of this thread was the Rolling Stones song. ---
**Author:** ![Mangosteen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Mangosteen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangosteen)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2012, 3:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sealing-wax/634142/25 "2012-09-11T03:15:43Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > Not according to Pete Yarrow, who wrote the song and vehemently denies any message other than “the obvious one” – loss of innocence. > > Which is hard to argue against, especially since the “loss of innocence” is a very clear narrative, while the “drug references” are just random words, many of which are not really drug references at all. The Beatles for years claimed _Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds_ was NOT about LSD, but finally in 2004 Paul admitted that it was. From Wiki: "Paul McCartney said that the song is about LSD, stating, “A song like ‘Got to Get You Into My Life,’ that’s directly about pot, although everyone missed it at the time.” “Day Tripper,” he says, “that’s one about acid. ‘Lucy in the Sky,’ that’s pretty obvious…” I’m just saying that Pete might have felt pressure from his record company (and others) to deny the drug reference. ---
**Author:** ![johnpost](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f17d59/32.png) [@johnpost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/johnpost)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2012, 3:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sealing-wax/634142/26 "2012-09-11T03:34:25Z")
sealing wax was also used to seal containers like bottles and jars. i have no idea how it compares to the letter closure or document authentication sealing wax. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2012, 4:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sealing-wax/634142/27 "2012-09-11T04:35:37Z")
> [@Mangosteen](#): > > The Beatles for years claimed _Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds_ was NOT about LSD, but finally in 2004 Paul admitted that it was. > > From Wiki: > > "Paul McCartney said that the song is about LSD, stating, “A song like ‘Got to Get You Into My Life,’ that’s directly about pot, although everyone missed it at the time.” “Day Tripper,” he says, “that’s one about acid. ‘Lucy in the Sky,’ that’s pretty obvious…” > > I’m just saying that Pete might have felt pressure from his record company (and others) to deny the drug reference. I think Paul was having a little joke at the interviewer’s expense there. He must have done an awful lot of interviews in his life, and I wonder how often he has been pushed about “Lucy in the Sky” (which was really John’s song anyway). Indeed, I am sure he is tired of being asked about drug references in Beatles songs in general. The Beatles have been snarking about fans over-interpreting their lyrics as far back as “Glass Onion” on the White Album (“I tell you we’re as close as can be, man!”). _Maybe,_ “Lucy in the Sky” was about acid, it is not implausible given the surreal imagery of the lyrics, but I do not know why both John and Paul would have denied it for so long if it really were. After all, they freely admitted to taking a lot of acid, and that their music was influenced by it; John even boasted about how much he had taken, but he always denied that it was what “Lucy in the Sky” was about. As for ‘Got to Get You Into My Life’ being about “pot”, that is frankly absurd. It is plain enough what the lyric is about, and there is nothing surreal or stonerish about either the lyric or the music. Likewise, there is no good reason to think that “Day Tripper” is about acid tripping, except for the fact that it uses the word “tripper”. Does this mean, I wonder, that the sitcom _Three’s Company_ was really about acid? Much the same applies to “Puff the Magic Dragon”. Sure, a lot of late '6s music was about, or influenced by, drugs, but that does not mean that every word in a lyric that can possibly be interpreted as a drug related pun was actually intended that way, especially in children’s songs. [I will stipulate that “Magical Mystery Tour” (the execrable TV show as a whole, as much or more than the song) and “Yellow Submarine” (the movie, but not the song as originally conceived) probably both were about, or at least heavily inspired by, acid.] ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2012, 12:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sealing-wax/634142/28 "2012-09-11T12:17:03Z")
> [@johnpost](#): > > sealing wax was also used to seal containers like bottles and jars. i have no idea how it compares to the letter closure or document authentication sealing wax. Paraffin used to be sold for sealing home canned goods. It’s much more resilient than the hard, brittle sealing wax that I’ve seen sold for sealing letters, and I suspect it would break much more easily and let air leak in – the point of that soft wax seal is to keep the bottles hermetically sealed. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2012, 1:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sealing-wax/634142/29 "2012-09-11T13:04:46Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > Paraffin used to be sold for sealing home canned goods. It’s much more resilient than the hard, brittle sealing wax that I’ve seen sold for sealing letters, and I suspect it would break much more easily and let air leak in – the point of that soft wax seal is to keep the bottles hermetically sealed. Sealing wax was used to [seal wine bottles and preserves](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealing_wax#Composition). Apparently it might not contain any ‘wax’ per se. I imagine it was used to seal the edges around a cork or other closure. As you mention, a hard substance covering a large area is likely to leak. Although maybe these concoctions stuck well to the sides of the container. ---
**Author:** ![cmkeller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmkeller/32/118_2.png) [@cmkeller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmkeller)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2012, 1:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sealing-wax/634142/30 "2012-09-11T13:09:07Z")
And here I always thought it was something that Eskimos somehow used when hunting pinnipeds. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2012, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sealing-wax/634142/31 "2012-09-11T13:51:43Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > Sealing wax was used to [seal wine bottles and preserves](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealing_wax#Composition). Apparently it might not contain any ‘wax’ per se. I imagine it was used to seal the edges around a cork or other closure. As you mention, a hard substance covering a large area is likely to leak. Although maybe these concoctions stuck well to the sides of the container. I’ve seen wine bottles sealed with sealing wax (and also ribbons wrapped around the bottle and sealed far from the cork – clearly the wax wasn’t dpoing aything here to hold out any gases, but was ensuring that there was no tampering with the seal). I’ve never seen hard sealing wax used to seal home canning. It seems a lot less trustworthy to me than paraffin. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2012, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sealing-wax/634142/32 "2012-09-11T14:07:35Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > I’ve seen wine bottles sealed with sealing wax (and also ribbons wrapped around the bottle and sealed far from the cork – clearly the wax wasn’t dpoing aything here to hold out any gases, but was ensuring that there was no tampering with the seal). I’ve never seen hard sealing wax used to seal home canning. It seems a lot less trustworthy to me than paraffin. They list [Tomlinson’s Cyclopaedia of Useful Arts](Tomlinson’s Cyclopaedia of Useful Arts) as a reference in the wiki. That looks interesting. Before the age of plastics they had to be very creative with the materials at hand. The quick blurb in the wiki may be missing a lot of important information. I can’t see sealing wax used on modern wide mouth jars either. But maybe it’s referring to a much older practice. I’ve seen the wax on wine bottles, and I agree it’s doing nothing to provide a seal. Maybe it helps keep the cork from drying out. ---
**Author:** ![johnpost](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f17d59/32.png) [@johnpost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/johnpost)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2012, 2:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sealing-wax/634142/33 "2012-09-11T14:15:51Z")
> [@johnpost](#): > > sealing wax was also used to seal containers like bottles and jars. i have no idea how it compares to the letter closure or document authentication sealing wax. > [@CalMeacham](#): > > Paraffin used to be sold for sealing home canned goods. It’s much more resilient than the hard, brittle sealing wax that I’ve seen sold for sealing letters, and I suspect it would break much more easily and let air leak in – the point of that soft wax seal is to keep the bottles hermetically sealed. Paraffin sealed inside the container and was softer. i was thinking of external use with waxes, both brittle and soft. ---
**Author:** ![KneadToKnow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kneadtoknow/32/3999_2.png) [@KneadToKnow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KneadToKnow)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2012, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sealing-wax/634142/34 "2012-09-11T14:23:08Z")
> [@Floater](#): > > Back to the OP: What other words rhyming with “tax” can you think of? There are [lots](http://www.rhymezone.com/r/rhyme.cgi?Word=tax&typeofrhyme=perfect&org1=syl&org2=l&org3=y). ---
**Author:** ![randomface](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/5fc32e/32.png) [@randomface](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/randomface)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2012, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sealing-wax/634142/35 "2012-09-11T15:33:04Z")
I use sealing wax on the various wines and meads I make, especially when using real corks instead of synthetic ones. It produces a nice finishing touch when combined with a wax seal somewhat related to my last name, and protects the cork somewhat against drying out if it is stored improperly. It won’t protect it forever, but after I store it upside down for a few weeks and then seal it, it should be good for a few years. I did an experiment with a batch near the beginning, and it make an appreciable difference in how much of the cork was dried out when I checked on it in two years. ---
**Author:** ![Learjeff](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/94ad74/32.png) [@Learjeff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Learjeff)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2012, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sealing-wax/634142/36 "2012-09-11T16:00:35Z")
> [@rotntoe](#): > > Or, was it “ceiling wax.” How many times do you have to wax the ceiling? I remember as a kid hearing “Puff the Magic Dragon” and wondering what the heck ceiling wax might be. > [@Princhester](#): > > Lax. Lacks. Cracks. Axe. Hacks. Backs. Smacks, flax, blacks, sacks, sax, jacks, (plastic) Macs, knacks, packs, racks, yaks, and now, even “Barach’s” ! > [@cmkeller](#): > > And here I always thought it was something that Eskimos somehow used when hunting pinnipeds. snicker snicker ---
**Author:** ![SpeedwayRyan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce7236/32.png) [@SpeedwayRyan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SpeedwayRyan)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2012, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sealing-wax/634142/37 "2012-09-12T16:08:33Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > As for ‘Got to Get You Into My Life’ being about “pot”, that is frankly absurd. It is plain enough what the lyric is about, and there is nothing surreal or stonerish about either the lyric or the music. Well, perhaps YOU think it’s absurd, but Paul has been pretty open about it for years now: that’s EXACTLY what the song is about. He smokes pot for the first time and writes an ode to it, claiming that he’s “got to get it into his life.” Kinda explains the “other kind of mind” that Paul finds in the song as well. Could the lyrics also be about a woman? Sure, and that’s exactly why he wrote it that way, instead of calling the song “Pot: I Love to Smoke It.” Why do the lyrics need to be surreal or the music “stonerish” for a song to be about drugs? It’s an ode. This connection is very well accepted as fact in the world of Beatledom, BTW. From the Paul bio “Many Years From Now”: > [@](#): > > “Got to Get You Into My Life” was one I wrote when I had first been introduced to pot. I’d been a rather straight working-class lad but when we started to get into pot it seemed to me to be quite uplifting. It didn’t seem to have too many side effects like alcohol or some of the other stuff, like pills, which I pretty much kept off. I kind of liked marijuana. I didn’t have a hard time with it and to me it was mind-expanding, literally mind-expanding. > > So “Got to get You Into My Life” is really a song about that, it’s not to a person, it’s actually about pot. It’s saying, ‘I’m going to do this. This is not a bad idea.’ So it’s actually an ode to pot, like someone else might write an ode to chocolate or a good claret. It wouldn’t be the first time in history someone’s done it, but in my case it was the first flush of pot." ---
**Author:** ![johnspartan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a183cd/32.png) [@johnspartan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/johnspartan)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2012, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sealing-wax/634142/38 "2012-09-12T20:23:54Z")
> [@rotntoe](#): > > Or, was it “ceiling wax.” How many times do you have to wax the ceiling? It never occurred to me until seeing this thread that the line _wasn’t_ “ceiling wax”. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2012, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sealing-wax/634142/39 "2012-09-12T21:00:16Z")
> [@cmkeller](#): > > And here I always thought it was something that Eskimos somehow used when hunting pinnipeds. I think it’s actually from Newfoundland, where the give the baby seals “sealing whacks”. * * * Those big fancy seals at the end of documents are done with sealing wax. IIRC the copy of the Magna Carta I saw (Salisbury Catehdral?) had a seal affixed. In the days before literacy was common, it was a quick way to make a fairly official sign that a document was genuine. Today we have the big red (or sometimes, gold foil) starburst as an imitation of that on some certificates. Seals (as mentioned) were also used to seal letters. My dad used to do this when he wanted to do something special. A wax seal, wax dribbled over the junction of the fold then impressed with a signet (see?) ring ensured the letter was genuine and not tampered with. It would be pretty easy to see if someone sliced a wax seal and re-clued it, and not easy to do without wrecking the initial impression of the ring or stamp; plus, the idea was to press so the ring impression area was pretty thin, so you could not hot-knife underneath it. (After all, anyone with the resources to create a fake ring could also forge signatures. So a seal was probably as secure as you could get.) Sealing wax has to melt like wax but stick and harden rock hard so it does not flex, crumble, or come unsealed - so it is a tricky bit of technology for its time. All the sealing wax sticks I saw had a wick in the middle, so they burned like a candle, but held horizontal they would drip enough soft drips onto the seal point of a letter or envelope that you could impress your signet into the mound before it hardened. I think by the sixties sealing wax was pretentious, esoteric and eccentric - basically the lyrics likely say that mama was a spoiled rotten shopping bitch (rich enough she owed a lot in taxes) and daddy was too busy with his own useless hobbies to pay any attention to his kids either. The English especially seem to have a history of eccentric upper class types. I think the song lyrics in their own way are a very good portrayal of the spoiled but neglected rich girl type. ---
**Author:** ![Inigo\_Montoya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inigo_montoya/32/124_2.png) [@Inigo\_Montoya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inigo_Montoya)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2012, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sealing-wax/634142/40 "2012-09-12T21:12:21Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > It’s supposed to be Mick talking to a girl that’s he’s interested in but that he knows is too crazy to get involved with. The weirdness of her father is one of the things that have messed her up. Even 50 years ago Mick knew what not to do with The Crazy. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sealing-wax/634142.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sealing-wax/634142.md?page=3)