Mad Wax-A Tambourine wax

Mad Wax

I've tried many ways to help with tambourine thumb/finger rolls.  Different brands of tambourine wax, waxes for different applications, sandpaper, etc. I've also ruined a number of tambourines with these experiments including one particular messy incident using cross country ski wax.
By far the best commercial wax that I've found is made by Black Swamp. It doesn't build up in layers, doesn't produce globs, and is effective on both skin and synthetic heads. The only problem with this wax as with all waxes is they tend to get lost.  At nearly $10 a pop this drained my YS budget along with wing nuts, wing bolts, cymbal stand felts/sleeves, etc.
I thought that if I could develop a recipe for my own wax and make it in bulk it would be less expensive. I chose to use bees wax as the basic ingredient. Then added glycerin, lanolin, white paper glue, lip balms, and fingertip moistener individually and in different combinations. All of these had drawbacks that cancelled any advantages that they provided.

Coconut Oil

I saw a jar of this at the grocery store and thought "Why not?" I started out with a 1:1 ratio-too soft. I jumped to 4:1 (bees wax:coconut oil)-Excellent!  It created good friction, didn't build up, didn't soak into a skin head. I took some in to the next sectional and had the percussionists try it with great results. After 2 weeks the wax got very soft. The storage room for the percussion equipment was next to the boiler room and was at a constant 80°. After 4 weeks the tubes had gone missing, this gave me a reason to experiment more.

This time I did 6:1 (bees wax:coconut oil). This was the right combination for the 80° in storage and didn't seem to affect it when used in the rehearsal hall.

1:1-a good general wax. 6:1-a good wax for warm and hot temperatures. So why not a wax for 'cold' temperatures? 2:1, this was soft enough when it got cooler but I was concerned it might soak into skin heads so I cautioned the percussionists to use it only on the Black Swamp TD1 with a Renaissance head (after later experiments I found that 2:1 did not affect skin heads).

We now had 3 types of wax for any condition:

1.  Mad Wax 1- the original (4:1)
2.  Mad Wax 2- for cold conditions (2:1)
3.  Mad Wax 6- for warm conditions (6:1) 

I purchased some cardboard tubes and made stickers for packageing. These were replenished every 4 weeks when they had gone missing (never could figure out that part).