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View Full Version : Wax on GG? Anyone prefer this?



gevalia
7-Apr-2010, 10:26
All,

Ran into a few old posts where people were putting a wax (like Renaissance wax) on the frosted side of their GG. Some claimed it sharpened the image as well as brightened it. Anyone here doing this? Just wondered before I spend the time testing.

Ron

Ivan J. Eberle
7-Apr-2010, 10:58
I did this on a GG that I ground myself (very fine abrasives), and do find with the wax it's a bit brighter and/or more evenly illuminated. I used an auto paste wax, forget which kind but might have been Blue Poly.

gevalia
7-Apr-2010, 11:37
I did this on a GG that I ground myself (very fine abrasives), and do find with the wax it's a bit brighter and/or more evenly illuminated. I used an auto paste wax, forget which kind but might have been Blue Poly.

Ivan,

How often do you need to apply the wax? Any issue in hot climates?

Ron

Glenn Thoreson
7-Apr-2010, 11:42
An old, old practice. However, they used to use nose grease. Wonderful! :D

Scott Walker
7-Apr-2010, 11:45
An old, old practice. However, they used to use nose grease. Wonderful! :D

would that be from the inside or outside of the nose:p

Ken Lee
7-Apr-2010, 12:12
How about mineral oil ?

Peter De Smidt
7-Apr-2010, 13:04
Mineral oil will lessen the diffusion needed for a ground glass too much. Plus, it's messy. The BosScreen used a layer of wax between two glass sheets to focus the image on. They give a very fine-grained image. Wax doesn't melt until it gets pretty hot. You shouldn't let you camera bag get that hot. As you make your ground glass brighter, you will also make a more pronounced bright spot.

Glenn Thoreson
7-Apr-2010, 17:37
Never thought about that....

Nathan Potter
7-Apr-2010, 19:15
Silver ski wax will work. But as Peter says, any filling in of the GG fracture sites will increase the hot spot effect since it reduces the off axis light scattering. It's all a matter of preference.

Nate Potter, Austin TX.

Robert Hughes
8-Apr-2010, 06:34
An old, old practice. However, they used to use nose grease. Wonderful! :D
Cinematographers and camera assistants still use nose grease (from the outside of the nose, silly!) to lubricate the film gates of movie cameras.

Ivan J. Eberle
8-Apr-2010, 07:13
Actually, the car wax on the one GG that I applied it to seems to spread the light evenly. Will say that the camera it's in is not the one I'm using with my Nikkor SW 90 f/8 though, so I can't really speak to difficulty in focusing.

No problems encountered due to temperature extremes, yet. Keep in mind this is not a sandwich or laminate, just a very light finish on the surface. I did get a couple of water spots on the wax side of GG that I've ignored, but this post reminds me to look for the wax to redo it after 6 mos.

I'd suggest trying it with a spare GG, not your only one. And if you're going to draw grids, do it first, and test to make sure the wax won't dissolve the ink.

Frank Petronio
8-Apr-2010, 08:02
I wonder if the dry wax lubes for bikes would work well for this? Someone please try it on their camera for me first ;-)

falth j
9-Apr-2010, 17:03
I tried some wood paste wax, which was not at all like the consistency of vaseline, but rather more spreadable and fast drying.

The experience wasn’t at all gratifying, but elicited hot spot ‘blooms’ in some areas of the ground glass.

The bloom was annoying to say the least, and then there was the battle to try and undo, what turned out to be a worsening of the ground glass view before the application of the wax.

The ground glass used was purchased off of eBay from a ‘well-received’ purveyor of ground glass who described his gg as ‘finely’ ground.