Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => Bows => Topic started by: stuckinthemud on November 06, 2021, 03:31:02 pm
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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
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That will entirely depend on whether you also may want to use it for food contact items.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Pitch, as in coal tar pitch?
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Likely pine pitch, the hard dried stuff. But I reserve the right to be wrong! (lol)
Hawkdancer