The wax seal stamps

A wax seal stamp for a W Z logo, Wizards and Zounds, sitting behind two dark red wax seals, one with a W Z, the other with a K dot T dot in a circle.

For business and sigilling



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Two circular pieces of wax on a table over a piece of cardstock, along with a carved wooden dowel and metal tin filled with clear candle wax shavings. One of the pieces of wax has been shaved down to about 5 millimeters thick, and the other is still just wax poured into a tube made from painter's tape around a coin.The two disks of wax, carved to have a W Z logo for Wizards and Zounds, and the other Kabutroid's K dot T dot signature and sigil, which itself still has tape around it, sitting on top of a box for jb weld, with a partially melted tealight candle behind them.The two tape tubes filled with dark grey JB Weld, sitting beside the tubes for the two part epoxy, and the W Z logo drawn onto a circular piece of paper that was used to create the seal.

The two grey disks of JB Weld with the wax mostly cut off, with the pattern visible beneath.Kabutroid holding one of the stamps between her fingers, the reversed K T with the wax melted out, and the linework is visibly different widths, and the circle around the circumference is just overall poor. A lump of bees wax sitting on top of the sandpaper sleeve is in the background.The beginning of the W Z logo, with the W created in a much thinner, smaller dark grey bees wax, carefully placed over the pen ink drawing of the logo written on white masking tape.

Both of the logos, the K T and W Z, on separate pieces of tape stuck to separate pieces of paperboard to avoid damaging one while working on the other, with crisp, clean lines and sharp details.The logos covered with two generally flatish globs of JB Weld, and a jar lid above them being used to mix the epoxy, with the stir stick inside.A size comparison between the new, smaller stamps and the first attempt ones, on a light brown wooden table. The new ones are about two thirds the size, about a centimeter smaller across. The lines on the new ones are very crisp and clean, and since it was sanded on finer sandpaper, has a much darker background in contrast to the lighter knife-smoothed grey inside the linework.

The two stamps above their wax counterparts, the wax seal itself showing the Kabutroid sigil and the Wizards and Zounds logo facing the correct way again, in dark red wax.The dowel to attach the stamps to with four holes drilled in the head of it, and the tip narrowed to fit the wax seal stamp, the W Z logo being held beside it. Below the dowel is a jar lid with some fresh JB Weld mixed inside of it ready to be used to attach the stamp to the dowel.asdf

The finished Wizards and Zounds stamp, sitting by a window, showing the grey marker indicating where the center of the bottom of the stamp is, with a tiny W etched into the indicator.The finished Kabutroid sigil stamp, sitting by the window, with its grey bottom indicator having a tiny K etched into it.

The two wax seals, Wizards and Zounds and Kabutroid's sigil, sitting in front of the stamp showing the Wizards and Zounds side, all crisp and clean and wonderful and stuff.-->
Well, after my move to England, I started to put my shop back together. Being as it's going in a far more magical direction now, after making a potion scroll to transport my magic potions to and from faires and events, we wax-sealed all of the potions at long last, which brought to mind... I need a new wax seal stamp as well, because why not. I'd previously carved them, but the grain of the wood made those straight-up unsuitable for the task. So looking around online, it was mentioned that two-part epoxy is often used to make wax seal stamps! So hey, that could work, our good friend JB Weld to the rescue again!

Now, I'd debated whether to try carving into a block of JB Weld, or how to carve the reverse in silicone or something, then put wax in there, then JB Weld over the wax, and quickly settled on just carving what I wanted the seal to look like out of wax, then putting JB Weld over that, and melting the wax out. So we meticulously (as we could) carved little circular disks of wax to look like how I want the seal to come out after stamping, and coated them in JB Weld. I figure that since I'm no longer using the name Thingies and Stuff, and the wood grain made that stick like mad to the wax (and also wasn't smooth), I could use the old wooden dowel as the main handle to attach the epoxy stamps to.

Aaaaand I didn't like the result. Lines were uneven, the stamps were just overall too big, we've gotta start over with better wax. Cue the beeswax (from my pysanky painting kit. Oh WOW this works so much better! Precise, crisp lines, I can add or remove bare slivers of wax as needed, I can use the pysanky kistka to draw more wax in where needed! Ooohhh, so we made some stamps that are FAR more precise, like a centimeter smaller (one-pence sized rather than two-pence sized), and far cleaner and smoother. This'll do. Now, to avoid missing getting JB Weld into the corners and crevices, I sacked a paintbrush to paint the epoxy into all the little spots, and left that to dry. Now, let's see how round 2 comes out...

And the verdict is... SUCCESS! Oh my goodness, bees wax was the key, the lines are CRISP, and since I used a brush to add the JB Weld, there was virtually no bubbles! There were a few tiny ones, which were filled with sanded JB Weld powder and crazy glue, and the face was sanded smoooooth as silk with 600 grit sandpaper. The insides of the lines, both to even them out and remove the remainder of the beeswax, we carved/scraped flat with a sharp carving knife, and now the insides are smooth as silk too (and visually looks incredible now, with the light grey linework and the dark grey background. And on testing, it came out BEAUTIFULLY! Nice crisp lines in the wax, eminently readable, there's some residual dust from the build process in the text wax seals, but they came out nice. With a little bit of practice, they will start looking poif.

Added bonus, the Wizards and Zounds stamp, when held at an angle, looks like a VE for vegan :D

Last step, attach them to the wax seal dowel! We first of all hacked off the face of the old dowel a bit, because evidently it was cut fairly unevenly originally, so we made that level, and narrowed the faces to better fit the new stamps. and carved some grooves in the faces to add extra surface area for the JB Weld to grip into. Also, we put four holes in each side angled inwards, to fill with JB Weld as well and make sure it can't just pop off of the wood face. So with that extra support added in, we added a layer of JB Weld to the back of the stamp and the face of the wood (really filling up those angled holes), and pressed the two together, and stood it upright to make sure that both the top and the bottom were perfectly level. Also, I made sure that the stamps are aligned exactly the same on either side, so on the dowel I will be able to have a top and bottom indicator to make sure that it's stamped straight.

And that's exactly what we did after the initial drying, we carved in some indicator marks at the exact bottom of the stamps, filled them in with JB Weld, cleaned them up and filed them level with the wood, and cleaned up the lines between the wood and the stamps. There's some slight darkness differences between the sides of the two stamps, but that's because the WZ didn't have enough epoxy added initially and needed another seam, so we added that and I decided against filing it down only to "change the colour slightly". The side of the sigil already has some minor colour differences in itself, but it'll just make it uneven if I try to adjust anything further, so I can live with this. The differences will help me tell which side is which at a glance, at which point we also etched a small W and K into the appropriate indicators, to let me know absolutely sure which side I'm stamping with, since that's facing towards me.

And so, with that little bit of indicator etching, the wax seal stamps are done!!!

Completed April 12, 2025


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