Home-made Furniture Polish

Kev was out collecting wood one day when he came across 2 abandoned bee hives. Kev being Kev, could not resist bringing them home. When we looked inside we found beeswax! I had wanted to use beeswax to make candles and cheese wax too but could not find it to buy here. The fact that Kev had found some was a bit of a bonus!

The first thing I wanted to know was if you could use olive oil with the wax. All of the research I did said to add essential oils, coconut oil or other oils I didn't have. I couldn't find one page that used just olive oil. With us having a crop of olives every year and a free supply of oil it made sense for us to use it and not to have to buy other oils. I just decided to suck it and see.

I used 6 tablespoons of grated beeswax, put this into a glass jar in a pan of boiling water. I had read that beeswax is very, very flammable and so should NEVER be heated in a single pan. I don't know how true this is but I didn't really want to risk it.  If you decide to do this, keep in mind what ever you melt the wax into will not be able to be used for anything else. This is the reason we used a jam jar.
In the following picture I have moved onto making larger amounts but you get the idea.







Pan with a little water





Heat the wax in the pan of water

The wax was melted and I added 8 tablespoons of olive oil to it. When you add the oil the wax sets instantly as the cold from the oil hardens the wax again. You need to keep heating it and stirring to make sure the 2 mix well. When all the lumps have melted you can pour the mixture into a container. I used an old boot polish tin for my first lot.

As you can see this is very dark, it was because the wax was not cleaned properly. You can also see that it is almost runny. It works brilliantly on dark wooden furniture and I have even cleaned my brown leather boots with it.

I decided that I didn't want it so runny, I wanted a set polish. I used the same method as above but only added 6 tablespoons of oil to it. This set firmer. It is still easy to use with a cloth but you seem to use less because it is firmer.

The bonus that came from using this is that the polish is very good for your hands too. When I had finished polishing the wood my hands felt like they had been creamed, very smooth and supple!