With a nice long visit with my parents for Christmas, I thought it would be nice to have my father
make me the Medieval version of the PDA: A wax tablet. Step the first, is to research, for which I
found first one
site by Randy Asplund which depicts some of his replica tablet as well as a history of tablets and
instructions for making your own. I read that and we were set to go with making the tablet itself, waiting
with the wax pouring for more information and also material.
The tablet itself is made from beech, my original idea was to make a tablet the size and shape of
the "cut-outs" in the sides of my scribal desk (see above), so that meant beech wood, and an arched
top. The dimensions found on my desk were a little harder to replicate with the wood that my father
had. After finishing a second scribal desk there was some triangular pieces of the glued beech left,
which were the only available material. Going with what we had, we decided on a half-sided design,
so that when the leaves of the finished tablet folded out it would form the arch at the top.
Having a tablet is all well and good, but I also needed something to write with: a stylus. Randy Asplund's
site also mentioned different kinds of styli, which we looked at, and my father, having good memory
suggested a birch handle with antler-tip for writing. The birch is a curly-grained wood, in Swedish
called masurbjörk, and it has a wonderful swirling pattern and a magnificent glow after polishing
and oiling.
As for the closing mechanism of my tablet, I did another search and found the site of the blacksmith
Haakon, mundanely known as Harri Ryynänen.
His listing of clothes and accessories
contained a few links to wax tablets he has made, this one in particular showed a method of closing that I
thought was genious. My father being the creative mind improved on this method by inserting the leather into the
side of the tablet to hide their attachment points entirely, making a practical "lock" which keeps the tablet
closed as well as keeps track of the stylus!
Now we needed information on how to produce a writing surface. I asked on my Principality's homepage forums
for help and got directed to this
excellent article by Greg Priest-Dorman and Carolyn Priest-Dorman through Anna's Craft Link Page. Armed with this information we purchased materials
(beeswax and charcoal)
and melted the wax in
a water-bath. It was quite simple really, and with the powdered charcoal it produced a pouring which was
quite black. Unfortunately, I was not happy with the result on my first attempt so I scraped the wax off,
put it back in the water-bath and melted it again. A second pouring was better, I did not get any strange
white swirling pattern nor as many large bubbles marring the surface.
With that done, all that was left was to mark the tablet as mine, and date it. Not until after I had already signed my name to the back of the tablet did I think about my scribal mark. I have one, you know, but I have yet to put it to proper use.
Accompanying my large tablet, some time afterwards was a little one, this one in oak. I was asked at an event if my father could make them smaller, in which case I could sell one more tablet. I talked to the carpenter and he sent me a test of the new size, this time in oak, with much thinner leaves, and much smaller. The stylus that came with it was also similarly scaled down and it is all so adorable I just want to cuddle it. Of course, though it is tiny, fits in my hand very nicely, it is still not as tiny as a recent find from York which is an eight leaf book of boxwood wax tablets 1.5 mm thick, with the middle four leaves have wax on both sides, dated to 1375-1400.>> More images from the manufacture of this and another tablet in my gallery.