Soft beeswax polish recipe.

[ED65]

You should have good luck retaining the carnauba and just making the mixture a softer consistency as I suggested. Take out a spoonful and dissolve in about the same amount again of turps and try it out, I'm sure you'll find it's much more amenable to spreading thinly and smoothly at stage one.

Although you may want to try a mix with less carnauba commercial wax polishes can be as much as a third carnauba so a high amount of it isn't considered too difficult for consumers to deal with. The way they get around the problem is by making the polish a soft paste, cream or liquid.

If you still have trouble, especially on cold metal, you might want to try a slower-evaporating solvent. Or as an alternative, warming the surface the wax is going on. Having a hair dryer handy in the workshop isn't a bad idea anyway for other things like glue-ups in cold weather and to help penetration when doing epoxy fills.

 

[Rorschach]

A heat source is a good idea I think, I use both a heat gun and hairdryer in the shop regularly for other projects.

At the moment the consistency feels much better with the added turps. I will do some testing tomorrow.

 

[custard]

commercial wax polishes can be as much as a third carnauba so a high amount of it isn't considered too difficult for consumers to deal with.

What's the source of that, are you sure it's not just some dodgy marketing bumf for a car polish?

Based on a great deal of practical experience my conclusion is that a 2:1 blend of other waxes/carnauba is a fearsomely stiff and intractable mix. But we can all learn, so if you want to brew some up and demonstrate with a little WIP I'd be happy to amend my view.

 

[Rorschach]

Tested this morning, comes up lovely on wood, good shine and quite easy to achieve. Also much improved on the bandsaw table even though the workshop was cold, I was able to spread it out quite thin before it "set".