homemade furniture wax

I didn't take any pictures of the process while I made or applied my homemade furniture wax for this kitchen table project, but I thought I could throw the approximate recipe on here in case anyone else wants to experiment with it and avoid some fumes from commercial products. 

You need:

Beeswax - 1 oz

Paraffin wax - 1 oz

coconut oil - 1.5 c or less

essential oils if you want

For mine I took a glass mason jar and placed it in a pot of simmering water with beeswax and paraffin. You can do this in a double boiler (which I don't own) but since this involves wax it sounds like a labor intensive and annoying thing to clean up. Better to just make it in the container you'll store it in. 

I did equal parts beeswax and paraffin, one ounce each, and melted them in the partially submerged jar. This took a little longer than I expected. Various recipes around the internet called for differing amounts and types of oils, but I went with coconut because it won't go rancid. 

Surprisingly, making furniture wax calls for a lot more oil to wax ratio than I would have thought. One recipe said 1.5 cups per ounce of wax, but that sounded like a lot to me. I think I did 1.5 cup total instead and wouldn't mind it being even more solid with less oil next time.  I think I would start with 1/2 c and add more oil to adjust if it's too hard to work with.

Keeping the jar in the simmering water I added the oil and stirred for a while till everything seemed to come together. You can add some essential oil to make it smell nice too. Lavender smells great. 

Once it looked emulsified and had no chunks I set it out to cool and stirred it periodically to make sure nothing separated. 

Then when the wax was cool, I grabbed a cloth diaper, dabbed it into the wax and rubbed a very thin layer all over my piece of furniture. Enough to see that it's there and to give it a hazy dull look. Leave that for a few hours and come back with a clean towel to buff the crap out of  the wax. Work it in circles and straight lines till everything looks beautiful and shiny and doesn't feel tacky. I think you're taking the oil off and setting the wax in when you do all of the rubbing. Your hands will feel really soft after you get done!

I'm pretty sure this was a lot more pleasant than breathing fumes from miniwax while heavily pregnant with a vulnerable baby.