BEES WAX TREATMENT FOR WOOD

BEES WAX TREATMENT FOR WOOD Coscoja Workshop.

It is a very old technique. Egyptians used beeswax for wood treatment and the construction of ships. Our ancestors valued it a lot. It is said that the beautiful sound of Stradivarius musical instruments is due to the use of " gold varnish ", made ​​of wax , propolis and linseed oil . But the old recipes have been largely lost and natural products have been forgotten by the appearance on the market of cheaper industrial products such as waxes and synthetic varnishes .

Here you have a homemade recipe for making a semi-hard wax, easy to apply :

Mix 24% beeswax with 6% carnauba wax, blended in water bath at 60 or 70°C. Then add 30% essence of turpentine ( pine turpentine ) and the 40% left with linseed oil. It is important if you plan to apply the wax in toys that the flaxseed oil is without siccative because it would contain lead and could be toxic if it’s licked.

To get a softer wax, turpentine portion is increased at the expense of reducing the beeswax. For a harder wax do in reverse.

A hard wax is, for example, suitable for parquet , flooring , furniture , inside of windows , toys and musical instruments. A semi hard for doors , frames , picture frames , antique furniture , inside of windows , carvings, turned parts .... A soft wax works best for wood paneling for walls and ceilings and aftercare of wooden objects of any kind.

The wood is not waterproof and so can breathe, but it will also absorb stains if it gets any liquid on top.

The wax can be applied with a cotton cloth that doesn’t fray , making a wrist, or with a semi-hard brush or paint brush, trying to work well in the direction of the wood grain and ensuring that they are distributed evenly , filling every pore . The wax should be lukewarm to apply a thin layer effortless, especially if we have prepared a hard wax.

Drying time can be between a few hours and a day or two, and it’s less time the higher the temperature and lower the humidity. Normally, it is best to wait a day.

Once dry you can polish with a clean cloth and give it a soft glow . The smell of the essence of turpentine or linseed oil will disappear in a week.

If the wood gets dirty you can clean it again with wax.

When we started to develop our toys, we always finished them with wax. Our children went to a Waldorf school and all the kids used them as well. When we started doing craft fairs for the general public , due to ignorance, people thought the toys were not finished and commented things like "They are sold that way so that you can paint them as you like at home".

As the ignorance was unfortunately very general , we decided to start painting our toys, but with water paints, suitable for children and environment  friendly. We only keep some with no paint such as the wheel horses , stick horses , trucks, knitting machines or cribs and we now treat them with an organic oil which costs less to apply than the wax . But if anybody is interested in a special order of any toy treated with wax, please ask us . We are Coscoja Workshop

I hope the article has been interesting and useful , see you in the next one.