I had talked about how to use a wax seal stamp in the past. You can refer to my How to Make A Good Wax Seal and Which Kind of Sealing Wax Should I Choose for more details. I may be very familiar with wax seal now, but I sure wasn’t when I first started a couple of years back. I had had the frustration of making a couple of seals, and starting from the third seal, the stamp becomes gradually harder to release from the sealing wax to a point where the wax is jammed in the engraved lines of the stamp. This seems to be a problem many have experienced early on when they first experience the art of wax seal. I can talk about the temperature of sealing wax all I want, but you are here to figure out how to clean a stamp that is jammed with sealing wax.
How to clean a wax seal stamp that is jammed with sealing wax
There can be 2 reasons why the sealing wax is jammed in the engraved lines of your stamp and makes it sticky: 1) your stamp is too hot, 2) you lift the stamp too soon that the sealing wax has not been properly hardened.
Either of the issues you are having, the solution is the same - cool the stamp off. Don’t try to wipe off the sealing wax with a towel, cooling it off is a way less messy way to deal with this situation. Do you ever realize that the stamp is easiest to peel off when you make the first seal? That’s because the metal stamp head is cold. A cold stamp head again hot sealing wax quickens the hardening of the wax. Sealing wax is only sticky when they are hot or warm, once it is completely cooled off, it is easy to be picked out. Use a needle to help you go in the finely engraved lines to clear out any of the remaining sealing wax, and here you have a clean stamp ready to create more seals.
How to prevent the same from happening again
To ensure that the same sticky situation doesn’t happen again, simply make sure your stamp is cooled before you make another seal. A cold stamp is generally good to make 2 - 3 seals. Set it aside to cool it off before making more seals. Putting the hot stamp on a cool metal item helps quicken the cooling process.
If you are like us that need to make a large number of wax seals regularly, we like having an ice pack on the side to cool off the stamp after every use. A microfiber towel to wipe off excess water on the stamp before use is ideal, but of course, you can go without it and wipe the stamp on the t-shirt you are wearing. A microfiber towel just eliminates the chances of having pieces of fiber stick to your stamp that later happily ruin your seal with random fibers.
I hope I have fully answered your question as to how to clean up wax stuck in the engraved lines. If you have any more wax seal questions, leave us a comment and we will try our best to work on a solution for you!
