Homemade Wax Tablet

 Sometimes it's fun to recreate historical items to see how they really worked. 

A while back I saw several people make wax tablets and thought that would be a cool activity. A LONG time ago I made rolled beeswax candles and still had them, so getting the wax was easy. (To make these, you roll sheets of beeswax around a wick.) I considered (and even started) carving a tablet base, but found a suitable wood piece at the dollar store in the lid of a small jewelry box. I unscrewed the lid, sanded the sides and filled in the holes with wood glue. I then painted the entire thing in a coffee stain (which made it feel grainy so I probably wouldn't do that again). I varnished it to keep the stain in and then got to melting my wax. I used a silicone cup in a pot of water as my double boiler. It took longer for the wax to melt than I expected and I had to do it three times to fill my tablet. I probably used around 1 cup of wax for this.

Here you can see the tools I used:

I used all of a black candle and half of a dark blue one, giving me a fairly dark writing space. The wax is denser than I expected, harder to scrape (though I don't have a proper tool). I was surprised how quickly - and how much - wax built up on the writing tool I used (I tried with a matchstick and then a crafting tool that has a small ball on the end). I wonder if proper styli had a way of dealing with this.

I'm using my heat gun to reset the top layer of wax. It appears you'd lose a layer of wax each time you change your message. But your message will stay there unless it gets very hot or you scrape it off. I wonder if people kept a jar for the wax they remove so they can melt it and add it back on...