Homemade moulds for wax blocks...

As we have a load of wooden furniture which needs a good waxing from time to time, and because I use a fair amount of wax of the wooden stuff I make it's always good when you can get your hands on a load of wax cheaply, and through our free-cycling escapades we've recently acquired a load of wax, about 2kg in fact for free.


Here's some of it -

Looks like toffee, doesn't taste like it.

What sort of wax is it ? well as far as I can tell it's a mixture of beeswax and carnauba wax, where's it from ? well again my best guess is it's actually a type of mould releasing agent for the use in fibre glass moulding, and it smells a lot like the polishing sticks I use on turned wood sometimes, which are a blend of beeswax and carnauba wax, and some oils.

This is all well and good, but in it's current form it's not that easy to use, mainly because it's very hard, and although it would be okay on hard woods, it would most likely scratch softer woods.

So how to process the stuff ? well that's easy enough, we just need to melt it, but before we do we also need something to put it in, as in a mould of some sort.

I made two moulds, which will give me slightly different sized wax sticks, which I can use for various things, to start I got a couple of blocks of wood and marked out (roughly) some rectangles.


Moulds marked out -

The squiggly line is where I'll remove the wood.

Next thing to do is remove the wood to make some cavities, to do this I used forstner bits and a post drill, large drill bits or spade bits would do just as well.


Cavities made -

This is the smaller of the two moulds.

I used a small drum sander to tidy the cavities up a little, I wasn't being too fussy to be honest.


Cavities sanded (roughly it has to be said) -

Why the holes and the extra bit of wood ?

You may have noticed the extra bit of wood and the holes I've drilled in each bit, I have a little experience with moulding things, and decided that even though I'd be lining the moulds with foil I might still need a way to get the wax blocks out once set should they stick, hence the holes, these are for pins that are fixed into the other bit of wood, the idea being that once the wax has set I can just push the pin plate into the holes in the mould and push the wax blocks out, I clamped the two bits of wood together to make sure the holes lined up when I drilled them out.

I made the pins from a small bit of dowel - 

A spot of glue on each one fixes them in place.

Everything lines up - 

Seems to work as intended.

Right onto making some wax blocks, this as I mentioned is just a case of melting the wax, now at this stage you can think about adding extra stuff to the wax, essential oils for example if you want a nice smelling wax, or you can add oils like linseed oil, tung oil etc for a softer wax, you can even add tints to the wax, which is something I intend to experiment with.

To melt the wax you should use a double boiler, or a glass bowl over some boiling water, like you would use to melt chocolate (probably not a glass jar in a pan of water as I have)

Melting the wax - 

How to stress out your wife in one easy step.

I added a little raw linseed oil to this batch just as the wax was starting to melt as I wanted a softer wax, and as things were progressing I lined my mould with tin foil, cling film would probably melt and may cause problems when it comes to getting it off the wax once set.

Mould lined - 

Ready for wax.

Wax poured (and now we wait) - 

Should be set in an hour or two.

And here's the finished block - 

Looks like caramel, doesn't taste like it.

The foil came off the wax easily, although it did leak a bit and the block had stuck to the base of the mould, having the pins to push the block out where handy, and worked well (better than I thought if I'm honest)

To use the stick (which is much softer with a bit of linseed oil) is just a case of rubbing it on the surface of what ever you want to polish, I tested it on our kitchen table, which takes a pounding most days, so is in frequent need of a coat of wax.

Once a liberal coat of wax is on the wood all you need to do is buff with a soft cloth, it does take a bit of elbow grease, but it's worth it in the end.

Here's the table top before waxing - 

It's quite dry, so the oil will help feed it, the wax will protect it.

Apply wax and buff, minion deployed - 

Buffing commences.

My minion gave up after a few minutes so I finished the job off, and after about ten minutes (including applying the wax) the table now has a nice shine to it.

Finished - 

Not bad.

And that's that, it does buff to a nice shine, and it will last a bit longer because of the carnauba wax, which is quite a hard wax, next I intend to make some tinted sticks to use on turned pieces, and as we have a load of wax we should be okay for polish for a while, not bad, and free.

Thanks for reading.

Make your own polish for wood ... ...

Just a quick post on how to make your own polish for wooden furniture, that's real wood furniture, not chip board on mdf type stuff, I mean real good honest wood, oak,beech even good old pine stuff.

A while a go we got an old dining table from a charity shop, it has two pull out leaves and can sit 8 people at a push, but sits 6 comfortably, we have our meals everyday around it, yes we still sit at a table to eat, no trays on laps here.

When we first got it, it was varnished and it looked a little sad, so I sanded it back to the bare wood, and then we realised that we didn't have anything to put on it, and we didn't want to varnish it again, so I made some polish, which isn't really that hard.

We could have just bought a wax polish from a diy shop or such like, but they can be pricey, and you don't get that much, so making a wax polish seemed the best idea, we've been making our own polish for the last couple of years, we use it on all our real wood furniture, it protects the wood and makes it look great.

To make your own polish all you need is some beeswax sticks, we get ours from a hardware shop (yes they still exist in England if you know where to look, great places) the sticks cost about 25pence each, linseed oil, which you can get for about £3.99 for 500ml (this will make a fair bit of polish) and some essential oil, doesn't matter what flavour, lavender is good, or citronella (helps keep bugs away) and something air tight to store it in.

Ingredients.

To make the polish all you need to do is melt the wax, I use the tub I keep it in, which is just a plastic tub with a lid that seals well, I heat it in our microwave, but you could use a pan on the hob, but that would mean having to get wax out of it, so my way saves a little time and cleaning.

Once the wax has melted add some linseed oil, basically what you're looking for is about 1part wax to 3 or 4 parts oil you want the polish to be soft enough to use, but not too soft, so a little tweaking maybe needed, once you add the oil heat it again in the microwave, it's important to know that wax and linseed both have a flash point between 200 - 250 °C although you shouldn't need to heat it anywhere near that high, the wax should melt at about 60 - 75°C

Melting the wax.

Be careful this will burn if you get it on you while it's hot.

The next step is to add your essential oil, a few drops is all that's needed, then give it a quick stir and then leave it to cool, if when it's cool it's a little too hard or soft then either add a little more wax or oil depending, what you want is something a little harder than shoe polish.

I have also seen polish recipes that use a little white spirit as well, the first time I made polish I did add some white spirit, but to be honest it doesn't seem to make any difference if it's used or not, and white spirit does smell quite strong, so I'd stick with essential oil instead.


Once you have it so it's soft and it's cooled, then all you need to do is get a rag, I use old t-shirts and go polish something.

All you need is a rag and elbow grease.

You can see the difference it makes to bare wood.

The darker section has been polished.

I think it brings out the grain and colour of the wood, and the wood seems to like it, you can make a load of polish from a little of the ingredients, so if you buy a few wax sticks and a bottle of linseed oil it should last you a while, depending on how much you polish your furniture I guess.

We use it on all our wooden furniture, our craft box that doubles as a seat seems to like it a lot, always seems to come up with a better shine than the kitchen table.

Our craft box.

Thanks for reading.