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Home made paste wax


Jobtiel1

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Hi all,

I recently came across a video by Wood by Wright on how to make your own paste wax, since I was looking for some and didn't know what to get here.

Do you have any experiences or recipes for home made paste wax that you use? For now I have made three different "hardness" of paste wax from beeswax and raw linseed oil, and it seems to work really well! I'm using it to wax axes and other rust prone tools too. 

The video in question:

https://youtu.be/WiMw71UBj3M

~Jobtiel

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My mix is 50/50 blo and turps with beeswax added. I usually mix a quart of both and melt in a walnut or so size of beeswax. This ratio is a liquid, which I prefer. Add more beeswax and or less turps to get the consistency you want. Works for wood and iron. I apply to hot iron and cold wood.  ;)  I actually finished the interior logs on my house with this mix, and I applied it hot. For the house I used a carnuba based wax that I could get from the hardware store reasonably instead of beeswax. I did 4-5 hand rubbed coats to the logs. 

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I followed the recipe in Bealer's, "Art of Blacksmithing" including soot the first time. I didn't have beeswax so I used paraffin, aprox: equal parts, turps, Neatsfoot oil and paraffin, mixed as anvil did. Once melted and dissolved completely I stirred in soot, no idea how much but close to a 3lb. coffee can worth. It wasn't paste wax consistency but has good staying power on iron, some has been hanging in the weather about 25 years or so. 

Later batches were without soot and used beeswax. I was still using neatsfoot oil I read the msds for BLO and didn't want to make my own. It's had excellent staying power, I have iron in the weather as long as the paraffin version. I made this batch after discovering a couple blocks of beeswax being discarded at work and picked them from the pile maybe 3  months after my 1st. Otherwise I couldn't have afforded the stuff. 

I still have plenty of both batches but use "Trewax," a commercial carnuba paste wax, "Bowling Alley Wax," is another comparative product. Carnuba is my preferred finish on iron and it's what's on my hammer handles. When applied to hot coffee/tea steel/iron it becomes very penetrating and gets into every nook and cranny. Wiping off excess leaves a thin very HARD finish. If you leave a thick spot like a run or drip it will chip easily. Otherwise you can slam bowling balls into it for years without damaging it.

Frosty The Lucky.

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N O Thomas, I know how to bowl, I don't even slam bowling balls into bowling alleys unlike so many folks do.

 I already have a perfectly adequate treatment for my hammer handles, bless your heart for asking. 

Frosty The Lucky.

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I used raw linseed oil, not the boiled kind. Really interesting recipes, I'll try some of them next time as I have made maybe 200 ml of paste wax now. What does the soot add to the mix, what does it do?

~Jobtiel

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The reason for the turps is for better penetration and quicker drying. I only use this on hot iron. For a cold finish I add a "healthy" pour to my above mix and make sure you keep a tight lid or it will evaporate. Heres a drying time example. If I have a 10' section of hand rail, By the time i finish and walk back to the other end, its dry and ready for a second coat. I prefer a hot finish, but both have their place.

Edit: That should be a healthy pour of Japan Drier above.

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I believe the soot (lamp black) in Alex Bealer's, "Art of Blacksmithing" was to blacken the finish. When applied at black heat the soot supposedly penetrated the iron's "pores" and trapped the wax when it cooled, making a more durable and pleasingly black finish. I've never added it again, don't bother! Applied at high-ish heat the wax itself will blacken and leave a pleasingly patinaed finish. A little practice and you can have a brushed steel silver finish or one shading from a ghost of amber to black as the wax toasts to burns. The smell of the turps evaporating is a real crowd pleaser at demos too.

I rarely do projects large enough I can't wax them hot and if I did Trewax only needs fresh coffee/tea temps, a quick pass with a weed burner works a treat. And yes, I can toast Trewax for the same patination so no soot, EVER AGAIN. Trewax is also a food grade product.

The problem with using raw linseed oil is it takes forever to polymerize and stays tacky for maybe months, coupled with bees wax they may never harden up. I don't know, I've never messed with raw linseed oil, it's dangerous for it's tendency for causing spontaneous combustion in oily rags. 

Frosty The Lucky. 

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I've seen lots of mentions of this type of finish but what is the benefit vs straight oil finish? I've used BLO as well as canola for some food use projects and they seem to both give a pleasing blackened surface with decent protection.

Is the paste wax just easier to apply? Less messy?

I also picked up some bees wax recently but seems difficult to apply as it's rather hard when cold.

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Yeah that works great, and when you mix it with oil it becomes significantly softer. I've been using the paste wax I made for wooden tool handles as a final coat, and the waxiness fills in any gals to give a really smooth finish. For metal, I'm going to use it to protect tools from rust, as I think it's more durable than just oil as rust protection. For finishing a forging I apply beeswax hot.

~Jobtiel

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On 6/15/2022 at 4:07 PM, NoGoodWithUsernames said:

it's rather hard when cold.

Look above, my recipe is 50/50 blo to turps mixed hot in a gallon paint can with lid in case it flashes on my forge and a walnut to egg size piece of beeswax added. I usually mix a quart of both. It doesn't matter how much beeswax or carnuba you use, it wont change the color of your hot finish, but it will become more of a paste with more wax. This is best used as a hot finish on your iron. The iron is at a black heat. 

When hot finishing hinges, and before the hinge cools, I like to rub my beeswax block on the barrel so I get a good coating on the inside of the barrel and the hinge pin. Its a great way to get a first lube on the moving parts. It will fill all voids in the iron and continue to lube for a long time. 

The benefits over just plane blo is the turps thins the blo and it will penetrate the surface of the iron easier and dry quickly when done hot and create a more uniform and very distinctive visual satin black finish than when done cold. The wax, no matter what you use, is basically a sealer coat that you can hand buff with a rag when all is cool. So the major reason is purely aesthetics. 

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  • 11 months later...
On 6/12/2022 at 12:19 PM, Frosty said:

I believe the soot (lamp black) in Alex Bealer's, "Art of Blacksmithing" was to blacken the finish. When applied at black heat the soot supposedly penetrated the iron's "pores" and trapped the wax when it cooled, making a more durable and pleasingly black finish.

Lampblack is elemental carbon, so if you apply it right you can seal, carbonize and harden your steel at the same time. Idk about that in reality. 

Tho after carbonizing would be the best time to apply a hot carbonized wax.

I got a couple slicks I've ground down from some mystery 3/4 steel plate. I figured I'd get em to shape, sharpen them to scary, pack them in, press them til almost bursting, in a steel box of activated charcoal and lampblack from my chimney.  Clean them immediately after. While still hot, give em a bath in Blu, pull them out, dab them dry, then a bath in wax. 

 

Until i figure out how asphaltum was applied 100+ years ago that's the best I can come up with.

I got a Monarch modal A engine lathe from 1918 that's got its original asphaltum on it. xxxxx indestructible, and even tho this lathe was on a navy ship in ww2, not a speck of rust on the thing. Like magic.

Edited by Mod30
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  • 3 months later...
On 6/11/2022 at 7:50 AM, Glenn said:

He gets his boiled linseed oil from his friend who makes his own BLO.  He says if you purchase BLO from the store, wear gloves.  The MSDS sheets for BLO are good to read.

I was going to answer the original question here, but I noticed the suggestion came from James Wright. James is a youtuber. 

Another maker and I are experimenting making varnish (I've made 16 batches thus far from pine rosin to amber), and we're using Swedish linseed oil, and boiling it on our own. The stuff at the store has some metallic dryers in it, but very unlikely to be enough to be concerned with and a former Eastman chemist (who worked on things that we would handle or consume) who has warned me about plenty of other things has written that off. The trouble with unaccomplished folks like Wright or many others is that they parrot things they hear. 

Making varnish on the other hand, is "natural" and creates all kinds of toxic fumes. The parts are natural, but depending on components and temperature, things can be pretty unholy, even at a small hobby level. The chemist in question confirmed this, and I can tell you I've never noticed anything from consumer metallic dryers, but even the fumes from boiling linseed oil, which I have to do to prepare it for varnish, is far worse. That's the fumes, though, and not the boiled varnish. The boiled varnish is still stinky, but not in the same class. 

If it's a concern at all, just order raw flax seed oil from amazon if making a wax. I've had some on my shelf or 6 years now in the bottle and it's not turned or anything - raw flax and linseed are full of antioxidants, which get "washed" before making true boiled linseed oil so that the oil will oxidize while being cooked and polymerize. Point being, you could make a wax with it and I doubt you'll see it turn in your lifetime. 

To make paste waxes in general - back to the original question - you need to find good wax stock and understand solubility. Carnauba, for example, is generally soluble in aromatic solvents like turpentine or toluene or xylene, as well as limonene (citrus terpenes). I've used all of these. You generally need to heat high temperature waxes to speed along the process, and carnauba, for example, is pretty heavy duty on the wax side even at 1/4 carnauba to 3/4ths turpentine. While I don't care much about the linseed oil with driers, or didn't before I started boiling my own, the turpentine sold in blue cans is foul - the smell is almost hurl worthy, and good turpentine is expensive. Citrus terpenes are similar function and smell fresh and nice, but they're very sensitizing and you can develop a reaction to them at a lower dose than turpentine. 

Hydrocarbon waxes (paraffin, microcrystalline, blends of those) are soluble in mineral spirits, food grade mineral oil, naphtha. Hydrotreated versions of all of these are nice - they're not that expensive and they're low or no odor and mostly free of volatiles in cheaper stuff. The Naphtha sold at box stores is usually fine - search the SDS and see if it's hydrotreated. 

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asphaltum depends on what you're using - gilsonite powder is graded and makes a good japanning. Even better if you are willing to cook it at about 450F outside with linseed oil to crosslink it (at that point, you're making a varnish - the parts won't separate and settle in a jar). Bitumen and other more polluted stuff like roofing pitch is a hard no. 

Typically, a gilsonite-based asphaltum will bake to a cure and flow out before it bakes and look like a gloss. if you make a cold mix, you mix it before applying and the asphaltum and oil cure by the heat of the cook (as in, you end up turning it into a varnish on the piece instead of in a pre-done cook). 

Sewing machines and other higher value items often had an asphaltum or lamp black base (or both), but the subsequent baked coats are copal varnish. Gilsonite asphaltum has a little bit of a brownish cast, and sometimes had lamp black added to it to darken it. 

If you want to see an 1800s write up of this (it was unchanged at ford, except to note that the black non-metal parts were just varnished with a dark varnish and not japanning - obviously, it's a potential problem to bake a wooden part at 400-450F), you can find it in holtzapffel turning and mechanical manipulation III on google books (free - it's public domain). 

We see japanning like something on a stanley tool, but the old varnish making texts and finishing instructions refer to that as cheap japanning. I like it for tools, anyway. All of the nicer items used the higher end resin varnishes as clear over a dark base - thus things like singer sewing machines with a black base, then gold leaf decorations and clear high quality varnish over them. A good copal varnish is almost an indefinite finish in anything other than decades of sitting in direct sun. Darker color japanning on cars was popular back then - and probably paints - much because the pigment prevented UV light from destroying finish easily below a superficial surface layer. 

Lastly, there is a free public domain document about the japanning recipes ford used - i don't see it immediately with a google search. There is no perfect recipe - the more linseed oil you use, the tougher but softer the mix will probably be. The higher the resin ratio, the more brilliant and glossy it will be but it will become chippy or brittle at some point. Even basic varnishes like a clear copal varnish would've varied from 1 part resin to 5 parts oil all the way to 10 to 1 the other way depending on the goal. By weight, 2 parts oil to 1 part gilsonite is probably a good start, and then thin with turpentine or varnish maker's naphtha if turpentine is too expensive. 

No driers are needed if the finish is going to be baked - the curing of the finish is catalyzed by driers, UV light or the oven - they all do the same thing, it's just a matter of how bonds are broken in the oil and resin components. 

I'm not aware of a commercial varnish that matches copal varnishes, though. Boat varnishes aren't the same thing -they are made to be flexible, and they'll be stinky. A copal or amber varnish is a thing of beauty, but making them isn't as easy as making japanning. 

All asphaltum baking should be done outside. Gilsonite is pretty clean. The cheaper more pitchy petroleum asphaltums will smoke at a lower temperature and also give off hydrogen sulfides. I baked gilsonite on small items in the garage for a while and had a toaster oven lose its ability to regulate temperature and burn the japanning - it made me ill temporarily. Cold mix of gilsonite and oil will require a 400F or so baking temperature to actually get the components to link, though. Don't follow any instructions that say you can just bake it for a long time at a low temperature - all you get doing that is dried resin and oil that haven't bonded to each other and the finish won't last . 

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Another option (which I have not tried myself) is the water-wax invented by the late Hungarian master wood finisher George Frank. This is an emulsion of wax into water, which apparently results in a lovely dry shine without the greasiness one often encounters in organic solvents.

Melt in a double boiler:
8 ounces of wax (Frank used equal parts of candelilla and carnauba flakes)
6-1/2 ounces of Stearic Acid.

In a separate glass, earthenware, or enameled container mix together:
1 fluid ounce of triethanolamine (an emulsifier)
3-1/2 quarts of boiling water*.
(*If your water is high in minerals, use distilled water or rain water)

Pour the melted wax mixture into the water; begin stirring with a wooden paddle as soon as you finish pouring. Continue stirring until the mixture cools and has the consistency of heavy cream.

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I'm a little late welcoming you to the forum Buster Bolster but I'm loving sponging what I can from your posts. Really glad to have you. If you put your general location in the header you'll have a better chance of meeting other members living within visiting distance.  

I also really appreciate the reading list for a, to me, new subject. I recently re-approached fusion enameling for a special project and am engrossed with it for a while. It's not nearly as complex as what you just described. It's becoming a FINE day, thank you.

Frosty The Lucky. 

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  • 1 month later...

Good evening,

A blacksmith's paste I've played with over the years was a mix of olive oil and beeswax in varying ratios. It protects metal well but is a bit softer than something like linseed, so it tends not to hold up as well when in use. Great for storage or wall hangers though.

 

Where it really shined was as a wood polish. I've heard of it being used in candles and soaps too, but it certainly smells better than linseed. I also played with different solvents, acetone, mineral spirits and the like, and it seemed to get into the material a bit better.

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