hey there this is Rick I hope everyone's having a great day this is the next video in my herbalism basics series and this video is how to make an ointment now in order to engage with the healing and health giving properties of herbs we need to prepare them into a format we can physically use in an effective way and one of the ways we can do that is by making an ointment and these can also be referred to as balms ourselves now haribol augments are used primarily to form a protective barrier over the skin rather than to be absorbed into the skin a lip balm is a good example of this point iment helped to keep heat and moisture in so they are particularly useful for applying to the skin surrounding areas of aches and pains arthritis and rheumatism sufferers will especially benefit from this heat retaining action on the other hand if you want a remedy that needs to be absorbed into the skin then you may be better off with a horrible cream now I've actually made a video on how to make a horrible cream and you can see it by clicking the link here or at the end of the video now horrible pointment are made using infused oils beeswax or other kinds of solid fats are melted into the oil and then poured into jars and left to cool the result is a solid or slightly soft pointment depending on the ingredients used now a fairly popular average ratio and general guide is one cup of oil to one ounce of beeswax the ingredients will be different each time depending on what pointment you're making and what recipe you're following oh now it's really really important that you never make a preparation from a herb that you don't have sufficient background information on or understand its potential strength also some infused oils are safe to be used on wounds or broken skins but others must not be used in that way so it's important that you know these things about your hubs before you start working with them oh okay so here's how to make a simple point Minh now this will involve heating an infused oil in order to melt additional ingredients into it so you do have to be very careful about overheating the oil so for this method you need to use indirect heat and you can do that by using a double boiler which is a glass or ceramic bowl sat on top of a pan of boiling water you can also buy an actual double boiler system which is like two glass sauce pans that sit on top of each other now the secret of the double boiler is to only allow the steam to heat the glass bowl above not the boiling water itself so here's how we do it take an already horribly infused oil and add it to the bowl on your double boiler now add a block or pieces of beeswax and use the universal ratio of one ounce of beeswax to one cup of oil allow the bee's wax to melt gently into the oil and stir them together well once the beeswax is melted switch off the heat now this is the time to add any essential oils that you may wish to put into the mix stir well and allow the melted ointment to cool slightly and then pour it into clean right jars before it has the opportunity to set if it does start to set too soon just reapply gentle heat again real iqua fight now do be aware of leaving this point Minh in hot places such as on say a car dashboard because it will become liquid again if it gets reheated now as far as shelf life goes pointment can keep anything from three months up to a year all depending on the ingredients and the oils used so that's it for this how to make a horrible augment video make sure you look out for my other perhaps specific how to make herbal preparation videos where I will show you other methods of preparing herbs into remedies thanks for watching see you in the next video you