Did not want to sidetrack the Walnut oil discussion so I am starting over.
The discussion of what oil to use on cutting boards and salad bowls comes up over and over. I think I recall Russ recommending Safflower oil. I have been using it for several years. It does a wonderful job. Soaks in and dries nicely. Just slather it on. Does not go rancid, has very little odor or taste (none). And as far as I know no one is allergic to it.
Almost as an aside, I made some end grain boards out of Osage Orange. One coat and done. What a wonderful wood for cutting boards.
My recommendation to people for wooden utensils and cutting boards is mineral oil, in part because almost every household already has it and in part because I can't imagine mineral oil ever 'going bad" the way I sometimes hear organic oils (walnut, olive, . . ) can.
You get the best of both worlds if you add beeswax to the mineral oil. Because mineral oil doesn't dry or cure, the tendency is for it to stay "wet." This can give oily hands if you handle the piece and in some cases the mineral oil can contaminate the surface on which the piece sits.
When beeswax is added, it appears that the mineral oil soaks into the wood, leaving the wax on the surface which can be buffed to a low sheen. There is no "wet" residue of mineral oil once the piece has set for 24 hours or so.
Detailed instructions for preparing the oil-wax mixture are given in the link below.
+1 on the mineral oil and beeswax mixture for cutting boards. I mix it in a roughly 4 to 1 ratio. I keep it in an old crock pot and heat the mix up before applying it. I also use this on my wooden spoons.
As a little kid, Mineral oil was for constipation. Just don't like mixing it with my food. Why struggle to use and industrial product when there are food grade alternatives that don't require harvesting bees wax?
I do the same thing as Doc except I use half beeswax and half carnauba for the wax portion of the potion. The carnauba seems to add some hardness and a slightly better sheen to the finish.
An Internet search using "does safflower oil go bad" found some suggestion that after a year it might develop an "off" odor, flavor, or appearance. I don't see that as a guarantee that it will, but a possibility. I've never seen a suggestion that mineral oil can over tie develop an "off" odor, flavor, or appearance.
A mineral oil and beeswax finish might indeed by more pleasing to the eye and touch than just mineral oil, but that is not a coating the general public can reasonably re-apply as needed to woodenware.
What coating or finish to apply to woodenware to be offered for sale is a decision to be made by each individual vendor. Forums such as this one are a great way to disseminate information and experience so that informed decisions can be made.
While I don't have any definitive information, it might not be necessary to worry about beeswax harvesting. Honeybees store honey in wax comb, and when an individual cell is full the bees cap it with beeswax. For efficiency beehive supers are collected only when essentially full of honey, which in reality means capped honey. To remove the honey without damaging the comb (which can be reused many times) a hot knife slices off just the very tip and cap of the comb cells and then the honey is removed in centrifuges. So the collected beeswax is a byproduct of harvesting honey.
>>>While I don't have any definitive information, it might not be necessary to worry about beeswax harvesting.... So the collected beeswax is a byproduct of harvesting honey.
With beehives, I can confirm this. Given the resources, the bees make far more honey than they need, encapsulated in wax. I pull the extra and use a hot knife to uncap, then save this wax and reuse the bulk of the comb the next year. Some people sell the cappings wax, which is the best and most pure wax you can get. Some don't want to fool with it and throw it away. I save it, wash, melt and filter, then pour into molds. I give pieces to woodturners to make finishes.
I like to use straight beeswax on some woods such as Eastern Red Cedar. If round, I put it on while spinning and use friction to melt it slightly. Alternative, I rub it on the wood then use a heat gun to melt it. I wipe off what doesn't soak into the wood while it is hot.
I have just a few hives but still get 20-30 gallons of honey most years.
I use mineral oil and beeswax as a quick and dirty finish on many turned items. The combination will hide a multitude of sins and can be easily applied with a small rag soaked in the mixture.
Just turn the lathe speed up and melt the wax and oil into the wood. Then burnish with a clean soft cloth for a nice soft sheen/satin finish.
I took a bunch of 1-oz or so pieces of beeswax pieces to a club meeting once, enough for everyone. Some thought it was funny and pretended to eat it. Each one did look like a chunk of cheese! (it certainly won't hurt you and some claim it has health benefits.) I think Sir Lucas was there that night to do a demo for us.
Last year I mailed some to woodturner Bill White who wanted to experiment with using it in finishes but the nearest source to him was, I think, a 50 mile drive.
Bill tried a number of recipes and this was his favorite formula:
Mixed the wax with BLO
40% wax/60% BLO.
Added a splash of EV olive oil to retard any drying from the BLO.
Mixture seems to be top notch.
I've seen a bunch of formulas; one is 1/3 each of BLO, mineral spirits, and beeswax. I believe Raffan uses an oil/beeswax paste applied to turnings with a rag.
BTW, the worst place to buy beeswax is from a woodworking supplier. The local store wants $3 and ounce. One guy who sells my honey at his shop wanted beeswax as well - I shamelessly charged him 50 cents an ounce. I felt bad later since it was probably worth a quarter.
Beeswax tidbit: Be aware that pure beeswax is naturally yellow. You can buy white beeswax but most is chemically bleached.
Another beeswax tidbit: Bees generate wax from honey with great effort: "To produce their wax, bees must consume about eight times as much honey by mass. It is estimated that bees collectively fly 150,000 miles, roughly six times around the earth, to yield one pound of beeswax" To increase the honey yield is the biggest reason beekeepers reuse the honey comb each year.
>>>You name each of your bees? I kept a hive as a kid. I couldn't tell one bee from another.
Long ago at my beekeeping mentor's place I pointed to a bee and asked him he named his bees. He said sure, that's Gertrude. I said what about that one? Gertrude. What about the queen? Gertrude, all Gertrude, even the drones.
Since I got my bees from him I figured they were of the same genetic stock so mine are all Gertrudes too. I'm real bad with names so this helps a lot.
A couple of years ago I built a duck blind for my nephew and cousins. It's up on a huge cypress out in a slough about half mile from out cabin. Right now its about 12' up. Last week my nephew went over, and there was a huge Bald-face Hornet nest hanging from one of the rail post, and down under the deck. I'm sure I was over there about a month ago, and climbed up there and sat down right next to and over them for a while without seeing it. There was a non woven camo mesh hanging off the rail which has decomposed, and probably hanging over it.
Man I'm glad they didn't attack me. I'd hate to think how BAD diving or even jumping off and landing on a submerged knee could have gone.
By the way, they want ME to deal with it. I'll probably go over whenever the temp is down in the low twenties, with headnet some morning and try to get a construction bag around it. They are suppose to be all gone or dead after a freeze or two, but there have already been a couple of mornings in the mid twenties, yet I saw them flying in and out yesterday.
Fortunately, bald/white faced hornets are not aggressive (unless you mess with their home.) I used to be terrified of them until I found out. Now I go up near the nest to watch it. Unless the nest is in a bad spot (like yours) I just leave it alone.
I've removed the nests at night when the residents are not flying. I put on a beekeepers suit, climb a ladder, hit it with a couple of cans of wasp/hornet spray, then knock down the nest.
A friend of mine slides a plastic garbage bag over them at night (if he can reach them), sprays some hornet spray in the bag then ties it closed.
This summer I iwas watching a huge nest here about 10' off the ground. After the 1st frost there was no activity but the colony may have been weak. I meant to save the nest but I forgot and a hard rain ruined it. A guy I know has one cut in half vertically to show the inside and I want to try that.
It is possible that next year's queen or some late pupae may be hibernating in a nest. My dad brought inside in early winter a hornet's next or two, and a couple weeks later would find a couple adult hornets at a window, trying to get out.
Equally interesting is an underground yellow jacket nest. To kill an active underground nest, I would pour a couple ounces of gasoline in a paper cup and simply pour the gasoline into the hole as I walked past. Never got stung and did this 4 or 5 times. Environmentalists might scream, but I tried to kill a nest once using an entire can of wasp spray without success. And sometimes the location of the nest is a problem for family members, joggers, et cetera. After a few days, carefully dig up the nest. In Cincinnati the top of the nest seemed to be 3-5" below the surface, and the nest a sphere 7-10" in diameter. Follow the entrance hole carefully, the nest was always 6-10" to one side. At the entrance, the paper exterior was somehow reinforced, like a landing zone for coming and going.
(Who knows what discussion one will find next on WoodCentral? My apologies Ellis.)
Don, I was thinking about using paper for lamp sha
Keith Newton
If I can carefully cut it apart then reassemble it, and wet it with a thin epoxy to toughen it.
About the yellow jackets. Last year I caught a drone and new queen mating, and got some nice macro pics. Doing a little research, I found there are two species here. An interesting thing about it, was this queen emerges from hibernation about a month later than the other. She then invades the others nest if she can find one, then kills the other queen, then uses her offspring as slaves to raise her brood until her own offspring hatch and take over. It’s a brutal out there in the bug-world.
This one is very large, and too locked into the structure to be able to be that simple. It started at about knee high above the deck, but most of it is down under the deck and tied into a post, a joist, and an angle brace, so it'll be pretty messed up by the time I manage to cut it loose. This weekend would be a good time to deal with it at 25º, but I'll be heading down to Big D.
