Make Beeswax Polish how? Any other uses for beeswax?

[stuckinthemud]

I am lucky enough to know a beekeeper and have a pound or two of pure beeswax. There are several recipes for polish, using white spirit, turps, linseed oil, boiled linseed, and so-on.  Even olive oil. What do you recommend?  Also, what other uses do you have for it?

Thanks in advance

Andrew

[PatM]

That will entirely  depend on whether you also may want to use it for food contact items.

[stuckinthemud]

No, not for food contact items, I always felt wax wasn't hard wearing enough for the kitchen.  Fab for furniture, decorative items and things like bows and bow strings though. Although it is a great finish in its own right,  I particularly like to use wax over an oil finish.

[Hamish]

From memory...use a double boiler to melt the wax. Take it out the heat and add a little white spirits and mix together, until it becomes a stiff paste at room temperature.

Natural beeswax is brown, refined beeswax is white. The type you use will give a slightly different look.

[bassman211]

Look on tube ,and you will get recipes  for bow finish. Can't remember how much turpentine , and linseed oil was added to a pound of bees wax, but it will make  a bow finish. You heat your bow limbs ,and add wax until wood stops sucking up the wax. Do it a couple times a year.  Fumes are bad to breath, so do it outside with a good mask. Doesn't smell good either. Maybe try doing away with the turpentine. Next time around I would.

[Pat B]

I make pitch glue for hafting stone heads and blades with hard brittle pitch, beeswax and finely ground charcoal. A good leather dressing can be made using beeswax, animal fat and pine pitch and bow string wax using beeswax and pitch...and don't forget candles.

[JW_Halverson]

From memory...use a double boiler to melt the wax. Take it out the heat and add a little white spirits and mix together, until it becomes a stiff paste at room temperature.

Natural beeswax is brown, refined beeswax is white. The type you use will give a slightly different look.

New beeswax is nearly white, but as comb is used/chewed up/reused, it gets mixed with propolis, feces, and other dirt in the hive. By the time it is brown, there is very little wax whatsoever left in it. I know, because I tried to refine 30 deep frames of brown comb and ended up with less than an ounce of deep yellow wax.

[bownarra]

I get beeswax off my friend who has kept bees for 50 years. I use it for a finish and string wax. Mixed 50/50 with pitch is wonderful string wax.

[stuckinthemud]

Pitch, as in coal tar pitch?

[Hawkdancer]

Likely pine pitch, the hard dried stuff.  But I reserve the right to be wrong!
Hawkdancer