BLO & Beeswax mixture?

[Bill Brehme]

Does anyone have a recipe for this mixture?:confused:
I was recently perusing "The Handplane Book" by Garrett Hack on plane restoration and seen mention of using a mixture of BLO & beeswax w/ steel wool (0000) to restore and preserve both the iron and wood of handplanes.
Well, if its good on planes then why not other hand tools?!! My shop is just a rust cave... This seems to be an old school way of fending off rust w/o spending alot of $$$ on your T-9s, renaissance wax, camillia oil etc...

Has anyone tried this? You likey? Dislikey?? Recipes???:confused:

Thanks in advance, Bill B:)

[James Mittlefehldt]

There is a company that makes a finish that is that recipe, that is boiled linseed oil and beeswax, and it is only those ingredients, no petroleum distillates, no heavy metal dryers. It is called Tried and True orginal finish, and smells quite nice amd is food safe. It is distributed here in Canada by Lee Valey, I am not sure who might have it in the states, but it is made in Trumansburg NY.

I have read quite a bit about their other products being very difficult to work with, but I have had no problem with this one, I simply put the can in a double boiler let it thin out and wipe on by hand spreading thin, after an hour wipe off any excess. Works well as a finish, ie simple and uncomplicated, to match me.

I have also seen where antique dealers will put the regular BLO on everything from saws to planes, makes them look old I guess, so maybe you could try that.

Lee Valey's online catalogue has a fairly detailed blurb about the stuff above though, if you want to check that out. Hope that helps.

[Casey Gooding]

I have most commonly seen this recipe with equal parts BLO, Beeswax and Turpentine. The Turp smell can be off-putting, but it works great.

[Bill Brehme]

Casey, how do you store it? Mason jar, in a tin, paint can etc...?

[Don C Peterson]

I just saw the Tried and True product at my local WoodCraft store. I didn't buy it, but it piqued my curiosity, and got me thinking of trying to mix some wax with Tung Oil. It seems like it just might work...

[glenn bradley]

The formula I've seen from two different authors is 1/3 each BLO, mineral spirits and beeswax. For example; take 1 cup of mineral spirits and add a little shaved beeswax, wait for it to desolve and continue adding shavings till you have 2 cups of the mixture. Add 1 cup of BLO and away you go.

[Don C Peterson]

Thanks Glenn, I'm going to give that a try tonight.

[Bill Brehme]

Don, lemme know your results?!!

[Kevin French]

I've used the same basic formula Glenn uses with great results. I've used it on a couple of work bench tops as weel as on tools.

I took Bees Wax bricks in trade for rebuilding some hives. There are so many uses for this stuff.

[Bob Smalser]

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?t=5728&highlight=cloth

http://pic3.picturetrail.com/VOL12/1104763/3389779/41589308.jpg

Lotsa uses for the basic "boat soup" you are describing.

50-50 Raw Linseed-Turps is the base. Fills the wood up so it absorbs less water, and waterproofs your oilskins and tin pants.

Add Japan drier if you want it to dry so you can paint over it. Add copper napthanate and pine tar for outdoor use at the rate of a cup per gallon. Add beeswax for shine if you like. Pine tar and beeswax both add body to the soup.

Omit the beeswax and add drier and a cup of pine tar per gallon for an excellent stain for blotchy woods like birch and soft maple.

[Bill Brehme]

In my mind I am wearing a tin pants/oilskin jumpsuit, staring at that big pile of feathers, hoping the wind doesn't shift...:rolleyes:

Hows about a "plane soup".:D

What mixture would compliment both cast iron and wooden tote handles, chisels, cabinet scrapers,channelocks etc... without having to modify between?

[Bob Oehler]

I have used glenns mixture for several years and love it.
I have used it on a few looker planes but not on any user planes to prevent rust. I usually just clean the plane good and then use minwax finishing wax on the bare iron parts let it dry rub off the excess and then your done, ready to put away for the next use.

Take care
Bob Oehler

If you can't hear the radio when you are working you are using too many power tools

[Don C Peterson]

I went home and started experimenting last night. I do have a little bit of pure beeswax around for waxing my planes but I didn't want to use it all up so I used a bit of Trewax which as I understand it is primarily Carnuba wax.

I took about a Tablespoon of the wax and dumped it in a bowl with about the same amount of mineral spirits. Maybe beeswax would have dissolved better or maybe it just needs more time, and possibly heat would have helped but I wasn't patient and didn't have a safe source of heat available, so I started breaking up the wax with a disposable glue brush...

Once I had the wax pulverized and mixed well I added a bit of 100% pure Tung Oil to the mix.

I used a clean rag to put the mixture on some scrap Oak and Walnut. In appearance it looks pretty much like putting Oil on the wood, but the wax in the mix does seem to create an almost instant lustre. The scraps are drying now and I'll buff them out in a couple days. I don't suppose that adding the wax will decrease the amount of time that the Tung Oil requires to cure, so building up this kind of finish could take some time.

Only time and use can tell how well this will protect over the long haul, but if Bob uses something similar on his boats, I'm pretty sure it will stand the test of time.

The smell is very mild and almost pleasant compared to Oil/Polyurethane mixes, and of course cleanup is easier too.

[Bill Brehme]

Last night I mixed together a tiny batch of this recipe - Equal parts: beeswax, BLO and Turps. Wow, thats a familiar old smell. I haven't had time to experiment w/ it yet (it got late.. early).
This recipe seems to be the most commonly found on the net.
Not sure I want to touch it to my planes quite yet.
Bob, wouldn't adding pine tar to the mix leave the tools kind of tacky?

[Zahid Naqvi]

I think Rockler sells a "Sam Maloof finish" which is composed of oil/bees wax mix.

[Ruston Hughes]

Like others, I too mixed up a small batch of BLO, beeswax and mineral spirits last night after reading this post. I was too impatient to shred the beeswax and wait for it to dissolve in the mineral spirits so I just melted it in a double boiler and poured it into the mineral spirits and then added the BLO.

Some things I learned:

1. a course rasp will not shred beeswax, but it will clog with beeswax very quickly and effectively.

2. adding melted beeswax to room temperature mineral spirits will cause the wax to gel into goopy lumpy mess. Putting the lid on the jar and shaking will coat the inside of the jar evenly with a thick later of goopy lumpy mess. Adding the BLO and shaking until your arms turn to rubber will eventually produce the desired mixture.

3. a couple of coats on a scrap piece of walnut looks very nice and was very easy to apply.

[Bill Brehme]

I also mixed up a alternate batch last night. This time I just went w/ Garrett Hack's basic recipe of beeswax and enough BLO to the consistency of melted butter.
I had an equally hard time "shaving" the beeswax w/ a sharp pocket knife... it just gums up both sides of the blade.:mad:

I combined 1/4 cup of BLO with a 2oz wafer of beeswax (only 1/2 shaved, the rest broken into chunks;) ) into a mason jar set into a pan of boiling water (no lid on jar so I could stir).
I also noticed that while stirring and cooling, the wax wants to form a crust higher up on the jar..:( Aw hell, at that ratio there should be plenty of wax in the mix. I'll just use the wax crust as a 'more pure' wax second finish coat!:cool:

I will be applying this to an old #5 plane w/ #0000 steel wool to both remove rust, wipe off, then finish coat both the cast iron and rosewood.

Stay tuned...

[James Tattersall]

Does anyone have a recipe for this mixture?:confused:
I was recently perusing "The Handplane Book" by Garrett Hack on plane restoration and seen mention of using a mixture of BLO & beeswax w/ steel wool (0000) to restore and preserve both the iron and wood of handplanes.
Well, if its good on planes then why not other hand tools?!! My shop is just a rust cave... This seems to be an old school way of fending off rust w/o spending alot of $$$ on your T-9s, renaissance wax, camillia oil etc...

Has anyone tried this? You likey? Dislikey?? Recipes???:confused:

Thanks in advance, Bill B:)

There are a lot of good posts elsewhere in the thread on BLO/beeswax recipes. But if you just want to wax some of the larger tools after use, consider simply wadding up some wax paper and giving the surfaces a quick rub.

[Don C Peterson]

Now that I have given the Tung Oil/wax mixture time to dry, the end product seems indistinguishable from applying Tung Oil. Is there a practical benefit of mixing the two?

At first I thought it was a good way to "kill two birds..." but then I realized that, at least with Tung Oil you need to wipe the residue off or else it becomes cloudy. So that effectively wipes most of the wax off. After letting the piece dry, there was not enough wax to buff to any kind of luster.

Finishing with a sealing coat of oil and following on with a few coats of wax is probably my favorite finish for most woods, but I can't help but woner if trying to do both at the same time isn't just a waste of wax because it just gets wiped off with the excess oil? Am I missing something?

[Bob Smalser]

Tung oil dries hard and can be applied in several coats.

The BLO mixes become soft and gummy with too many coats.

[greg stuart]

Hi All,

I like the sound of this concoction... nourishing and protecting in one..... and pretty simple......
now I am in Australia, and have an outdoor table and chair setting made from hard Australian hardwood (some sort of eucalypt) that I have inherited from a family member... that currently has to sit outside in our hot climate...

questions....
1. would this mixture be able to penetrate into a REALLY hardwood??? would I need to modify ratios in any particular manner???

2. Would it be suitable for an outdoors table and chairs????

Thanks....

GReg.

[glenn bradley]

I need to correct my previous post "The formula I've seen from two different authors is 1/3 each BLO, mineral spirits and beeswax." . . . it was turpentine, not mineral spirits. Sorry about that.

[Bill Brehme]

Phew!!! Thanks for the correction Glen... Tomorrow I was going to dump in some mineral spirits.:D

[Bob Smalser]

Remember linseed turns black with UV light, usually by the second summer. Substitute tung oil if that's not OK.

[Don C Peterson]

I need to correct my previous post "The formula I've seen from two different authors is 1/3 each BLO, mineral spirits and beeswax." . . . it was turpentine, not mineral spirits. Sorry about that.

I already tried Mineral Spirits and Beeswax and it seemed to work just fine. Disolved and made a nice paste then I added Tung Oil and it worked great.