Preservation.

[Dean]

Briwax, and Trewax are both pretty good. Fine Woodworking magazine did an excellent article regarding waxes last year. They even had some recipes for making your own wax. Some of which I tried.

Of course this all applied to woodworking, however there were some interesting items learned.

Carnuba has a high melting point (which is why it provides a nice hard gloss) However, too much Carnuba and the wax becomes difficult to buff out. Pure Carnuba wax by itself is unusable

Being petroleum based, mineral wax is a good for water proofing.

Beeswax is added for ease of application.

Basically, you melt the waxes under low heat on a hot plate, you then blend in some mineral spirits to get a paste consitency when it cools down.
You do this outside, of course, as there is a fire hazard.

The trick is to match the proportions of the different waxes to match the application. In my case I was concocting a high Carnuba content wax for buffing into gun grips.

I would suspect that for gun preservation you would want a higher proportion of mineral wax since water proofing is desirable.

Anyhow, it was a pretty good article.