The description in Today's Word says cloth has to have areas "covered" with wax, but doesn't say how. The cloth fibers have to be impregnated with the wax to prevent dye from coloring them. The easiest way to accomplish this is to dip fabric into hot melted wax. But it would be hard to get a desired pattern that way. I just had an idea. A piece of expendable cloth could be dipped into molten wax, spread out to cool. Then a pattern could be cut from this when cool, laid onto the work cloth, then a heat lamp could melt wax from it onto the cloth beneath it. This would make it possible to achieve a desired pattern repetetively if desired, or varied as desired.

As I remember from my hippy days, the hot wax was merely painted on the fabric. The process requires special cold-water dyes.

However, I can seem to recall the smell of hot irons from my hipless days--didn't some people use irons somehow when batiking?

Neat idea, Dr. Bill, but not how it's done. The tool used is something like a fountain pen but with wax instead of ink, and the batik-er writes the pattern on the cloth, dyes it, scrapes the old wax off, and then starts again with the next colour.

There is also an instrument called a cap (pronounced chap), which looks like an old fashioned iron, and is used to print ready-made patterns on the cloth.

For a quick and easy explanation of it all, see http://www.indonesianmusic.com/batik.htm

Bingley