THE WAX PROCESS By Robert D. Servoss

Almost all of the maps found in text and reference books, as well as the geometrical diagrams used in mathematical and scientific works, are made by what is known as the "wax process."

This process was invented and patented by an Englishman named Palmer about 1840, shortly after the discovery of the method of making electrotype plates for printing purposes. He announced that he would furnish artists with copper plates covered with a waxlike composition on which they could make their own drawings, in a manner similar to but much simpler than the method followed by the etcher on copper. After receiving the artist's work, the plates were to be returned to Palmer, who then made an ordinary electrotype of the engraving. A circular, issued about 1841, gives the necessary instructions for engraving, and the prices for the wax-coated plates and the subsequent electrotypes, and shows many beautiful illustrations made by artists of that time. It was then called the "glyphographic process."

The process was first introduced into this country by a firm of printers in Buffalo, New York, and was used by them for several years for illustrating the United States patent office reports until it was superseded upon the introduction of photo-lithography and the subsequent adoption by the government of a uniform standard for patent drawings.

This process may be described in a general way as follows: A copper plate having a highly polished surface is first blackened by the application of a weak solution of sulphuret of potassium, or other chemical which will oxidize the copper. Then a composition, made by melting together in proper proportions, beeswax, zinc-white, and paraffin, is "flowed" over the blackened surface, producing an opaque whitish engraving ground. The thickness of the wax is varied according to the subject to be engraved, but in general should not exceed that of heavy writing paper. After it has been allowed to cool with the plate lying perfectly horizontal, the wax is smoothed down to an even thickness by a steel scraper, and the plate is then ready to receive the engraving.

Taking for an example the engraving of a map, the original copy is either photographed on the wax surface, or is transferred to it by covering the back of the copy with red chalk and tracing over every line with a steel point. The photograph, or the tracing, on the wax must not be a reversed one, as might be supposed, but should "read right." The outlines of the map are then gone over, with an engraving tool which cuts out a small channel in the wax, down to, but not into, the surface of the copper plate. The bottoms of these channels will eventually form the surface of the relief lines in the resultant electrotype plate, but now appear as dark lines against the whitish groundwork of the wax.

The engraving tools are made in different sizes, and therefore channels of varying widths at the bottoms may be cut in order to produce lines of different sizes. In cutting lines to indicate rivers,—which must be thin at the source and increase in thickness as they approach the mouth,—tools are used in graduated sizes. The first one cuts its own line of equal width for a very short distance, then another and slightly wider tool is used, the next still wider, and so on until the river line is completed. In reality a series of steps, the work is so done that the line appears to the eye to increase in width evenly and gradually from a very fine beginning to a heavy ending. The wavy lines indicating hills and mountains are made in substantially the same way. Special steel punches are pressed through the wax to the copper to show town and capital marks, and after all the lines and marks are completed, the plate is ready to receive the lettering. The name of each individual town, city, state, or river is set up in printer's type and stamped one name at a time into the wax. The type is placed in a small tool resembling a vise, which holds it in perfect alignment and on a perfect level. Tools of various shapes are used for stamping the names in straight and curved lines. It is necessary to wet the type to prevent its adhering to the wax.

The plate is then carefully compared with the original copy and after any necessary corrections have been made it is gone over by an expert operator, who cuts out any of the channels which may have been obliterated by the burr of the wax, resulting from pressing in the names.

We now have a plate in which the lines have been cut in small channels and the names stamped with type. This is a matrix, or mould, from which an electrotype of the lines now sunken in the wax may be made in high relief for printing, but the blank portions of the wax are so thin that it is first necessary to fill in all these places on the plates with wax in order to produce a sufficiently deep electrotype plate. This is done by "building up" the plate. A small hook-shaped tool, heated over a gas jet, is used to melt small pieces of wax which are run carefully around all the names and in the spaces between lines, thus filling up all these spaces with a round, smooth body of wax. From this mould an ordinary electrotype is made by the method described elsewhere in this book.

All these operations require much skill and patience at every step, but the plates produced by the wax process are always much deeper and stronger than those made by any other process.[Back to Contents]