This electret was made of a 75mm diameter mix of rosin from a rosin bag (28.6 grams), carnuaba wax (38.2 grams) and beeswax (1.4 grams). I'm not sure of the exact ingredients of this rosin. A rosin bag is used by baseball pitchers, golfers, ... To soak up moisture and add friction to their hands they carry around a rosin bag. Just touching it puts a generous amount of rosin dust on your hand. Since it was white and it was rosin, I figured I'd try it though I was aware that water white rosin (which was not available) is best. The top electrode was 50mm so the effective area should be around that. This electret was made using the technique outlined on the main electret page.

Note: This electret was made, wrapped and put on the shelf on July 31, 2006. It won't be unwrapped until a month from there so check back later to see if it worked.

Making the Electret

Available at sports stores.

The beeswax, purchased locally.

Carnuaba wax ordered from http://www.eco-house.com/, Eco-House Inc., P.O. Box 220, Stn. A, Fredericton, N.B., E3B 4Y9, Canada, 1-506-366-3529. It is #960 in their catalogue.

The three ingredients before melting.

Note the uneven mixing.

I turned on the stove to MED at 11:47am thought with this one I had to do a lot of messing around with the temperature. While initially melting, it bubbled and crackled a lot. I made a mistake by putting the white fine powder rosin on the bottom to start. I could never get it to mix properly. I finally turned off the heat at 12:23pm with the wax temperature around 100C. While cooling, little bubbles would burst to the surface frequently and in different spots as if something at the bottom was creating a gas which had to rise. Initially I had trouble getting the power supply to stay at 6kV as there was some hissing. I had to raise the top electrode to be able to get it to hold at 6kV. While the electret was still cooling, the voltage kept going up slowly so I kept turning it back down to 6kV. At 1:05pm I turned off the power supply. The bottom of the aluminium bowl was a little warm. I couldn't easily dettach the top electrode so I left it attached and wrapped up the electret.

Be sure and check back in a few weeks for the results!!!