Featured Any tips for antique tortoiseshell caring?

heating is the way they mold the shell........ well , except maybe for a Box Turtle...
..

 

I'm sure heating will re-melt the glue and I'm afraid it's way too late for the Box Turtle

 

I have lots of Tortoiseshell, I love it...
I use Almond Oil and sometimes I use Renaissance Wax Polish, that's amazing stuff and you can use it on lots of other things, even paper.
A tin lasts ages, I get mine on Amazon.

 

I've used wax to fill in missing bits...
Here's me thinking I was the only one who does that

 

The real art of filling with wax is matching the colour.

 

Yes it is, I buy colored wax sticks of several shades, they can be mixed together to get a better colour match, fortunately with Tortoiseshell being several different shades in the one item you can get away with it not being exact.... Sometimes!!!

 

I didn't have coloured wax sticks when I did it but I'm sure these would be better than using wood stain to match the shell. Normally I never use wax as a filler, I'd rather cut in a new bit of wood, before I started restoring my own antiques I used a restorer and said to him I didn't want him to use wax but it came back and he had used wax, this was the reason for me starting to restore myself. The money it's saved me must be thousands and thousands.

 

I only use wax on T/shell, I don't think it gives a good finish on wood.
I bought an early Tortoiseshell box a couple of years ago that was damaged, missing corners and pieces gone here and there, I saw the potential though, it was the first time I tried wax to repair T/shell, it occurred to me that it shouldn't be too difficult to match the shades, it looks very nice now