Altoon,
I checked and you are right: the modern Renaissance wax does have a BASF polyethelene as an ingredient. In fact, there are about five different formulations of Renaissance waxes now. I have used them on swords, pikes, daggers, helmets from the 1500s, silver and copper coins, etc, when I was a weapons curator ( as a volunteer ) for a museum. For leather, we found some formulations from the Museum of Natural History to work better than Renaissance products.
For my hunting rifles and shotguns, I would not use Renaissance Wax, because it is difficult to remove. The only wax I have ever used was Johnson Paste Wax, which is a furniture wax, composed mostly of beeswax for spreading, and Carnuba Wax for hardness. I used it on varnished wood and gloss blued metal of a Browning O/U and some rifles when the weather was damp or snowing. Afterwards, I cleaned it off the metal with mineral spirits. Since then, I have bought Parkerized rifles, stainless steel rifles, and stainless coated with Teflon, and my nice blued rifles and shotguns are for more fair weather.
I checked and you are right: the modern Renaissance wax does have a BASF polyethelene as an ingredient. In fact, there are about five different formulations of Renaissance waxes now. I have used them on swords, pikes, daggers, helmets from the 1500s, silver and copper coins, etc, when I was a weapons curator ( as a volunteer ) for a museum. For leather, we found some formulations from the Museum of Natural History to work better than Renaissance products.
For my hunting rifles and shotguns, I would not use Renaissance Wax, because it is difficult to remove. The only wax I have ever used was Johnson Paste Wax, which is a furniture wax, composed mostly of beeswax for spreading, and Carnuba Wax for hardness. I used it on varnished wood and gloss blued metal of a Browning O/U and some rifles when the weather was damp or snowing. Afterwards, I cleaned it off the metal with mineral spirits. Since then, I have bought Parkerized rifles, stainless steel rifles, and stainless coated with Teflon, and my nice blued rifles and shotguns are for more fair weather.
