I’ve
been making these recycled covers for a long time, and with the
exception of the beeswax on the hemp cord, they are vegan. Yesterday I
decided to try and make them 100% vegan.

Beeswax
acts in a couple of ways when binding books, first it keeps your thread
or cord from tangling. Secondly, it helps the cord to pass through the
stations as you sew. Lastly when you tie a knot the beeswax helps it to
stick in place. I also notice that it improves my grip on the needle,
since the wax is slightly sticky at body temp.

Since
the hemp cord I use on these books doesn’t tangle I decided to omit the
wax altogether. Big mistake, the protection the wax gives the cord as
it passes through layers of paper keeps the hemp from fraying and
getting too fibrous and insightly.

I
have some paraffin leftover from canning. I decided to test that out.
Instead of melting to the cord as it passed through the wax, it was as
if the cord cut it, like a chain saw, leaving behind lots of tiny little
flecks of paraffin all over me and my workbench. What a mess. the
paraffin on the cord was also in these tiny little pieces. I used a
lighter and carefully heated the wax and melted it to the cord. It
worked really well. However at body temp it made my hands very slippery.
I had to use a pair of pliers to pull the needle and cord through the
paper.
My
next experiment was to melt a small puddle of paraffin onto a piece of
cardstock and pass the cord through the melted puddle of wax. I used my
fingers to press the wax into the cord a little bit and to pull off any
excess. This seemed to work the best of any of the methods.

I’ve
got a couple of unscented candles that are made out of other waxes and
don’t contain any beeswax, so I’m going to mess around with melting the
candles along with some paraffin to see if I can get a wax that works
better.