The Project

I decided to make a wax tablet for myself so that I had a handy ‘notebook’ to carry with me at events.  I wanted one that would be convenient to carry in a pouch.  I originally considered making it a three or four leaf tablet but my mundane life got very busy and I decided that the two leaves might be all that I could manage.

I liked the smaller carved ivory and bone examples from the 14th century.  However as I don’t have access to those materials, I decided to make the tablet out of wood. This was also a very common material (though there are not many carved examples).  The York tablets were made out of boxwood and as it was also recommended in a number of my sources, I decided I would use boxwood for this project.

Materials
The materials I used to make the tablet were:
- boxwood
- beeswax
- lampblack
- leather thong
- tapestry needle (for stylus)

Preparing the Wood
Boxwood is a shrub and does not come in large pieces of wood.  I had purchased a half round of approx. 5” across the face and had a friend cut it into slabs.  Because the wood had a number of splits in the center, it was only practical to use half the diameter.  Another friend ran the slabs through a planer to even out the thickness.  They ended up thinner than I had anticipated but I figured I could still work with them.

I cut the pieces to size using a dremel jigsaw. The width of the slabs determined the width of my tablet, which fit well within the range of the surviving carved tablets.  In period these tasks would have been done with hand tools.

I finished the preparation by handing sanding, making sure the two pieces matched.
I then made my designs fit this size – 7.5 mm tall, 4.5 mm wide and 3 mm thick.

The Design
Many of the carved wax tablets had images of every day life and of lovers.  A few had religious scenes but “tablets with religious subjects are extremely rare” [fn20] though those were more likely to be preserved due to their beauty and religious value.

I wanted a design that was personally meaningful so I decided that the front would be a scene of a woman (myself) painting.  The layout idea came from a picture I had seen previously and I went from memory.  As many of the carved scenes were set into arches, I did the same.  I put a small bird up in the corner overlooking the painter to represent my Laurel, Linnet Kestrel, who provides me with advice and guidance.  I filled the other corner with a leaf pattern.  The woman representing myself also appears on the back along with a minstrel playing a lute, representing my husband whose music I enjoy hearing.  I filled the top corners with the same leaf pattern I’d used on the front.

I needed to keep the design within the scope I felt I could handle as I have only a little experience with carving.  The design should probably have had trees or bushes filling in the background, and this would have eliminated the need to smooth out the background, but I wasn’t sure I could make the figures clear enough so I stuck to a simpler design.

Carving the Recesses for the Wax
I carved the insides of the boards first so that if I made a mistake I wouldn’t lose as much work, as well as to get some feel for how this wood carves.

I started by incising a line around the edge, then used a small flat gouge to take off a thin layer of wood from the middle.  I tried to take a fairly uniform layer off though in a couple of placed the gouge bit deeper into the grain.  As soon as I felt it doing that I stopped and carved from the other direction but still ended up with a couple places deeper than the rest but not so deep that I felt it would cause any problem when the outsides were carved.  I did not worry about smoothing off the inside of the recess as the roughness would make the wax hold on better.

I left a wider edge on the side where holes would be drilled as I had seen this on several of the extant tablets.  The recesses are 1 mm or less deep.  I also carved cross-hatch lines in the bottom of the recesses, again following extant examples.  This is what the finished insides looked like (the holes were actually drilled later).
click here to see a larger picture

Carving the Covers
I transferred my designs onto the covers of the boards using graphite paper.

I started the carving by again incising a sharp line around the border and then around the outside of the figure.  I had purchased some very small chisels and used them to carefully remove wood from the background areas.  The boxwood had no tendency to split where I didn’t want it, which was very nice.

Once I had the background down to approximately the right depth, I started contouring the figures.  This was a challenge as I haven’t had much experience with it.

I’d decided not to paint the carvings as I hadn’t found any reference to painted wooden tablets, so the carving alone needed to define the lines.  I was also limited on how deep I could carve – I was constantly afraid I’d go too deep and go right through to the other side.  I keep feeling with my fingers to see how much thickness was remaining.

I had to go back over some areas a few times to get the depth even, and to minimize gouge marks.  The background is not nearly as smooth as I would have liked but I soon realized that I didn’t have the skill with the carving tools for that, and the areas were too small for me to sand.  The back design proved to be even more of a challenge than the front as there were more ‘layers’ I need to distinguish: the lady’s gown had layers due to the folds and the minstrel’s tunic was layered behind hers.  Then I needed to have hands and part of an arm in front of the lute and the lute in front of his body which still needed some depth difference from the background.  The full face was also difficult to get the features to stand out.
  click here to see a larger picture

Drilling the holes
Although drilling the holes is a minor step, I was very nervous doing it as I was afraid the drill might skip and the hole would end up in the wrong place.  I decided to put the holes in the top and bottom corners similar to the ivory tablet of children playing cockles [fn21] as this interfered least with the design.  I had rounded the corners on the design to provide more strength in these corners.

To ensure the holes ended up where I wanted them, I made them in stages, drilling from the inside.  I first used the tip of my exacto knife to make a small starter hole in the right place.  I used a dremel with a 1/16” drill bit to make a pilot hole, then followed up with a 3/16” drill bit.

Making lampblack
Although wax tablets appear to have been made with various colored wax, black was by far the most common.  It was colored using lampblack [fn22].

I made my own lampblack by placing a piece of flat metal above a candle so the tip of the flame was just touching the metal.  As the candle burned down I lowered the metal.  At first I tried holding a lid from a tin can (with pliers) over a candle flame but this was tiring, so eventually I found a large piece of metal that I could prop between two pieces of wood (anything the right height and that won’t suffer if it gets warm would also have worked).

Melting the wax
I had originally planned to use an old double boiler for melting the beeswax [fn23] but soon realized that I only needed a small amount of wax, far less than was practical to do in the double boiler.  I made a small test piece first and just melted the wax in an old spoon held with its bowl in simmering water.  This worked fairly well although the wax cooled fairly quickly.

I also found that the wax hardened quickly when it touched the wood making it difficult to spread the wax.  Warming the wood slightly on a coffee cup warmer alleviated this problem.  I also found that if I set the container with the wax on the coffee cup warmer, it would melt.  However the warmer was too small for the pan I planned to use for the wax, so I set the pan with the wax on our wood stove.

Wax coating the tablet
I spent quite a while deciding how to finish the outside of the tablet.  I had no information for any of the extant tablets on what, if any, finish was used.  Only the most elaborate wax tablet [fn24] had any indication that it had been painted.  It seems likely that many of the plain wood tablets that would have been made for casual everyday use were not finished in any way.

Both Priest-Dorman’s and Ulf’s website recommended boiled linseed oil though neither gave any indication that this was a documented finish, and Mistress Linnet [fn25] informed me that linseed oil was used in some areas in the preparation of panels for painting.  The websites warned about taking care not to get oil where the wax would be, which worried me a bit.  When it was pointed out by my husband that linseed oil takes a while to set properly and there probably wasn’t sufficient time before the competition, I decided against using this finish.  I also rejected the option of using a period varnish as it would also not have time to dry.

Asplund’s website suggested coating the whole tablet with clear wax.  At first I had reservations about this as I was afraid the wax might stay sticky, then remembered that furniture often receives a wax finish so perhaps that wouldn’t be an issue.  On the other hand, I wondered if pre-coating the tablet with clear wax might prevent the coloured wax from seeping into the end grain of the wood and colouring more than I wanted. Asplund’s website included an email address so I emailed him to ask whether there was any issue with the wax remaining sticky.  I got a prompt response assuring me that it did not.  He suggested that it worked best to warm up the wood first, put the wax on hot and then wipe off the residue before it set.

Another option I considered was whether the tablets could be finished with size as wood panels are before they are painted, but I had no indication that size was used alone.  Linnet Kestrel suggested that tablets might have been painted with lead white mixed with wax or oil to imitate ivory.  I decided that I didn’t want to go that route due to the toxicity of the lead white.  She also suggested the wood might be stained but as I was afraid that the stain might soak in unevenly and accentuate the rough carving marks, I decided not to try this.

I finally decided to try the wax but I was cautious and tried it on a test piece first.  It worked very well so that confirmed my decision.  I decided to soak the tablets in the hot liquid wax for a few minutes so that it had time to absorb into the wood’s pores [fn26].  I did the pieces one at a time, letting each sit covered in melted wax for about 5 minutes before fishing it out and quickly wiping off the excess with a paper towel.  I then let them sit and dry while I colored the wax.

Coloring and Pouring the Wax
I used the same wax I had used to coat the covers and added some lampblack.  Initially I hadn’t made very much lampblack and it didn’t go very far.  I thought it might darken when it was poured into the tablet so I decided to test.

The wax went on more reliably if the wood was warm, so I put a piece of aluminum foil on top of my coffee warmer and set one of the tablet pieces on it with the recess side up [fn27].  I attempted to pour directly out of the small pot but the wax wicked back along the outer edge of the pot so the wax ended up going beside and under the tablet rather than into the recess.  This caused me to panic as the blackened wax was getting on the outside of the tablet.  I quickly soaked off as much as I could with a paper towel (which was most of it), then scraped the rest off with my exacto knife.  I think having pre-coated the tablet made this a lot easier.  In the end, I got it all off but for a while I had visions of having to recarve that piece.

In the process I realized that the wax was not nearly dark enough, and also that I had way more wax than I needed.  The lampblack does not dissolve in the wax but stays as suspended particles unevenly distributed.  Because the particles partially settled out, I carefully spooned out the top half of the melted wax and added more lampblack to the remaining wax.  I was still collecting the lampblack on the tin can lid at this point and it was slow progress.

I tested the darkness again, this time using a small spoon to transfer the melted wax.  It was better but it was still not black enough and the lampblack seem to settle into the center leaving clearer wax along the edges.  I also found that the spoon transferred more wax than I needed and some slopped over the edges (which I scrapped it off again after it cooled).

At this point I realized I needed a lot more lampblack and it was taking too long to make it.  My husband located a larger piece of metal for me and we set that up over two candles and just left it.  When I checked an hour later, there was a large amount of lampblack.  I scraped this into the melted wax and mixed it.  This time it looked much blacker.

I decided to try another method for applying the wax.  Asplund’s website had suggested using a brush.  I found that worked much better.  I added wax until there was a good coat over all of the recess but not enough to overflow.

Once it looked good, I turned off the coffee warmer and let it cool until the wax congealed enough that I felt it safe to move the tablet.  I checked the colour, and it looked good and dark.  I was concerned about the thinness of the wax.  The recesses are fairly shallow due to the thinness of the wood and the wax needed to be lower than the wood edges to prevent the two wax sides from damaging each other.

I hadn’t made a stylus yet, so I took a needle and gently wrote in the wax.  I was very happy to find that I could make clear markings without hitting the wood below [fn28].  Having decided that the first side was successful, I turned the warmer on again, placed the second leaf on it and filled its recess.

Making Thonging
Finally I felt the two pieces were complete and it was time to tie them together.  One common tie method was to tie them with a leather thong [fn29].  I needed narrow thong to fit in the holes I’d drilled.  I had the remnants of a leather coat so I used a piece of that.  I decided the easiest way was to use a rotary cutter and a metal ruler to cut the thin strips though it could also have been done with a sharp knife.  I made several strips with a bit of variation in width.

I used the strips to tie the boards together with a reef (square) knot.  I found that the bottom hinge bound when I tried to close it which was due to the strip being just too thick.  I replaced it with a thinner one and the problem went away.

The tablet was now complete, but I needed something to write and erase with.

Designing the Stylus
A stylus has a sharp point on one end for writing in the wax [fn30], while the other end is used for erasing.  I have not had time to extensively research stylus designs.  There seems to be quite a number of variations.  There also appears to be a controversy over whether some of the items found were styli or parchment prickers [fn31].  The main difference is the shape of the ‘eraser’ end.  Many of the examples have a round ball on the end, some a flat wedge shape and a few are just flat across.  Priest-Dorman recommends rubbing the ball ends back and forth while the wedge ends are dragged across, however I found my wedge end works best rubbing back and forth as well.

I decided that it would be easier to make a wedge end than a ball end.

Extant styli are mostly made from metal or bone.  I don’t have the knowledge, tools or skill to make a metal stylus and that would be a project in itself.

I had some pieces of bone (of unknown type) so I decided to make the stylus of bone as a more appropriate material than wood.  However when I started cutting into the bone, I discovered it was hollow inside without enough solid wall to make a comfortably held shaft.  I had some elk antler but the center of the antler is porous and again there wasn’t sufficient wall for the shaft.

I would have to use wood after all.  Priest-Dorman and Ulf [fn32] recommend using an old arrow shaft, but I decided instead to use a piece of my boxwood.  They both also recommended using a tapestry needle with the eye broken off for the metal tip while Asplund recommended hammering in a small nail, clipping off the head and filing it to a point.  Another option I considered was inserting a piece of wire and filing it.

I decided that a nail would be too thick for use on my small tablet.  The easiest option was the tapestry needle as it already had a point on the end.  The tapestry needle has a very slightly rounded end which wouldn’t dig in as much as a sharp point.

Making the Stylus
I started with a piece of boxwood slightly thicker than I wanted my stylus and used a dremel jigsaw to cut out an appropriate piece of wood.  I wanted it small enough to be stored with my tablet but big enough to be comfortably held.  I used the dremel as it’s easiest for me to cut the small pieces with, but a hand saw would also have worked.

In period, the stylus would likely have been shaped on a lathe [fn33]. Since I don’t have one, I made do by turning my belt sander upside down.  Carefully holding the wood by the eraser end, I rotated it on the running sanding belt until I had a round shaft of the diameter I wanted.  I then tapered the point leaving a small flat place at the tip.  I then flipped the stylus and flattened the eraser end into a wedge.

Once the main shape was complete, I drilled a very small hole in the flat part of the point.  As recommended by Priest-Dorman, I broke the eye off a tapestry needle and attempted to insert it.  I soon discovered the hole was too small and the boxwood too hard to push into.  I used a larger bit and redrilled.  Unfortunately this drill was just too big so that the needle wiggled in the hole.  I didn’t have a drill bit between the two sizes so I compensated by filling the hole with epoxy glue.

After the glue had set, I took sandpaper and finished sanding the stylus by hand.  Once I was satisfied, I tested it out on the wax tablet and was happy to find both ends worked well.  I finished by melting some more clear beeswax and after warming the stylus I coated it with the hot wax then rubbed off the excess to give it a finish to match the tablets.

Compared to the extant examples, my stylus looked plain, so I carved three grooves around the shaft where it starts flattening into the wedge.  The result was not as neat as the extant styli but I felt it was an improvement.  I resanded and rewaxed the stylus.

My set was now complete.

Summary

I am pleased with the result of this project.  The carving turned out well, better than I expected considering my limited carving experience.  I was able to fix mistakes that I made and find other options when things didn’t work out as originally planned.  I found the boxwood nice to work with and it looks good.  I felt the wax finish worked well.  Although I was disappointed that the bone I had didn’t work for the stylus, the wood made a reasonable substitute.  And most importantly, I now have a period notebook to use.

I have become fascinated by the history of these objects and hope to learn more about them, and to create other styles including very simple ones [fn34].  I would like to try other woods, and if I can get suitable ivory or bone, I would like to try those.  I would also like to do more research into making other colours of wax and making styli in different styles and materials.

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Footnotes:
20.  Metropolitan Museum website  [back]
21.  see #15 of the List of Extant Wax Tablets  [back]
22.  Hughes states that the wax would have been mixed with pitch or resin “for ordinary wax alone does not readily lend itself to such uses”, but most sources suggest plain beeswax.  [back]
23.  Beeswax is the best wax to use as it is softer and is easier both to scribe in and to rub out the markings. [back]
24.  see #9 on the List of Extant Wax Tablets  [back]
25.  private correspondence  [back]
26.  The boxwood is very tight grained and this is possibly less of a problem than it would be with a porous wood like oak.  [back]
27.  The aluminum foil was to keep wax from accidentally getting on the warmer.  I used it all through the steps of filling the wax recesses.  [back]
28.  There are a number of extant examples where it does look like the stylus had penetrated the wax and scratched the wood below.  [back]
29.  Asplund; Royal Library of Belgium, 1277; #6 on the List of Extant Wax Tablets has the remains of thonging. [back]
30.  The stylus cuts the ‘artful windings’ of Aldhelm’s riddle.  [back]
31.  Alexander 1987.  [back]
32.  I believe that much of Ulf’s material is based on that of Priest-Dorman whose work he references on a number of occasions.  [back]
33.  The symmetry of bone styli and the numerous rings illustrated by Egan, p. 383 and extant examples in Alexander (1987), p. 273 seem to most likely to have been produced using a lathe.  [back]
34.  I have started working on a set similar to the York tablets.  [back]