in this video I'll be demonstrating how I made my own oil wax wood finishing product but first I thought I'd explain the reasons why as there were a few reasons firstly I've recently run out of bribe acts which is a product that I use quite often as a finish at least for the items that I make that don't need a lot of protection from moisture secondly bro wax is great for having a really smooth finish and a nice subtle Sheen to wood but it doesn't really pop the grain so what I usually do is apply boiled linseed oil first to pop the grain wait for that to dry and then I apply bro wax then I wait for that to dry and then buff out the wax with a cotton cloth I want my finish to be a blend of oil and wax as that will help speed up my finishing process a bit thirdly I thought that if I could make a product that I was happy with then it's something that I can make in bulk and sell via my Etsy store finally I just like making things and it's just something I was interested to try I wanted to try and make two different types of finish as well a food-safe blend which I can use on cutting boards and things like that and also a non food-safe blend which is the one that I'll probably use the most frequently as I don't really make a lot of cutting boards I need three ingredients to make my finishes the first is beeswax this will help to solidify the finishes and when it's applied to word it will add durability smoothness and a nice sheen when buffed I'd also need two types of oil mineral oil for the food-safe version and boiled linseed oil for the non food-safe version the oil will be what pops the grain of the wood nourishing the wood and making it look beautiful and they'll also add some extra protection to the wood too and white spirit but that will be added to the non food-safe finish only because obviously it's not safe stuff to ingest the white spirit will help to speed up the drying process of the finish and also because it dissolves wax it will also help to blend the ingredients of the finish and make it soft and smooth I first did a few experiments making some finishes using different wax and oil quantities before deciding what the formula was that I liked the most and I tried those different blends out on scraps of wood to see how they looked how smooth they were when buffed how long they took to dry and also how easy they were to apply once I knew what recipe I wanted to use for my finishes I could start making my first batch so I ordered a bunch of glass jars 72 in total and I bought these on Amazon I'll leave some links in the description box below if you're interested the more of these you buy the cheaper they are which is why I bought so many I've got some beeswax on eBay this is available in block form which is what I have here or you can also buy it in pellet form and in hindsight it would have saved me a lot of time if I'd have bought it as pellets because it's actually harder than I expected to chop up with a knife another alternative with the block of beeswax might have been to use a cheese grater but I didn't want to ruin my one-and-only cheese grater and get in trouble with the lady so I just persevered with the chopping once it was chopped up into smaller pieces the beeswax needs to be melted and because beeswax is highly flammable the safest way to do this is to use what I believe in cooking terms is called a ban Marie which is basically one large pot with some boiling water and another smaller pot floating on that water which contains the wax and it's important to use a low heat and keep a close eye on this to make sure there is no risk of the wax getting anywhere near the burner eventually the wax melts down into a liquid I'm using a couple of old sauce pans here and I won't ever used these for cooking again because once you get wax on them it's extremely difficult to remove so don't go using your favorite source pans for this maybe use some old ones or pick up some secondhand ones to use first I made the non food-safe finish and for that I found that the best ratio was 1/3 boiled linseed oil 1/3 white spirit and then I added 1/3 of the melted beeswax I just did this by eye rather than measuring out the quantities and that worked absolutely fine when I did my first experiments I found that it's really important to mix really thoroughly and quickly too because as soon as that hot wax hits the cold ingredients and the cold sides and bottom of the glass jar it immediately starts to solidify I used a piece of beech dowel to mix up the ingredients and that was good for getting right to the bottom of the jar to scrape the bottom and make sure it was well mixed once it was mixed thoroughly I put the lids on and left them outside to cool down for the food safe version I found that once again equal quantities worked well but maybe a fraction more mineral oil than wax because I want the wax to be soft and easy to apply so I pulled in a little over 1/2 mineral oil and then added the hot beeswax mixing thoroughly again with a beach towel and I used to clean dowel for this because I didn't want to cross-contaminate the non food safe ingredients with the food safe 1 and then I left those outside to cool down to the whole process of making this stuff is quite messy and once you get drips of beeswax on anything it's difficult to get it off without using white spirit so to be honest doing this kind of thing in your kitchen isn't really ideal I used a piece of perspex over my work surface to protect it and for easier cleanup what might be a better idea would be to do it all outside using something like a gas camping stove for the ban Murray that way if you accidentally spill some wax or oil on something it should be less of a problem next I used a rag soaked with some white spirit to clean up the outside of all the jars to remove any drips or residue and clean them up as later I'll be adding some stickers to these jars and I wanted those to stick really well then I designed some simple labels to put onto the jars and I got them printed up at my local print shop I did a front label and information label and an instructions label for each of the two finishes and I used different colors for the labels green for the original recipe and purple for the food-safe just so it makes it easier to know at a glance which is which both of these finishes worked out really great and I'm not just saying that because I'm now selling it I'm genuinely going to be using this going forward instead of bry back so you'll see me using it in future videos and by the way these are traditional recipes anyway this isn't something that I've come up with myself if you don't want to make your own and you're interested in buying some of mine that would be fantastic it's available now on my Etsy store link to that in the description box below if you want to support my channel but also get something back in return then buying this is a great way to do that I'm not sure if I'll continue making it it really depends on how well it sells and whether it works out to be financially worth the time I put into making it it's relatively easy to make and if you want to have a go at yourself I'd recommend learning from my mistakes so one consider buying beeswax in pellet form rather than block form to make sure you mix it really thoroughly when you add the wax 3 don't use your best source pans and 4 try and do it somewhere where you can make a bit of a mess because you will spill some wax or some oil at some point during the project I can almost guarantee it I hope you found this video useful or interesting please subscribe if you haven't already for more weekly woodworking videos and thank you for watching