My can of Johnson’s wax has carnauba in it. This is in response to my prior post, and almost right after as I thought it’d be smart to go look at the SDS and get an idea of the recipe and start from there.
To my surprise, there’s no Carnauba in the 2016 SDS. Just “hydrocarbon waxes” and stoddard solvent. Confusing!
A quick search for older SDS shows the 2004 SDS with ranges to protect the manufacturer from giving the exact formula, but carnauba was somewhere between 1/6th and 1/2 of the wax solids.
I’ll shoot for something between with a bias toward higher shine and faster drying. By my calculations, a pound of house made wax with 10% carnauba and 20% paraffin will be about $5-$6 to make.
The solvent is less fast-evaporating than VM&P naphtha, which itself can be mixed with mineral spirits or stoddard solvent.
If Johnson’s already had no carnauba in it, it may not be much of a loss.
Of Making by Hand with Wood and Steel 
Dave, thanks for the info you dig up and share, always helpful and gets to the root of the subject, no gloss included. Still shines though.
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I had to look up Stoddard solvent, which appears to be the same as White Spirits and ultimately it’s known in the USA as Mineral Spirits.
I while back I found several recipes combining beeswax, carnauba or shellac wax, mineral spirits, and turpentine. After mixing, the smell of the turpentine of the hardware store turpentine I used is so overpowering, that you’d not want to stink up your house using these mixes.
I know better now. I’m going to mix some new batches using some of the Diamong G turpentine I got for the varnish making experiments. It defintely smells less awfull.
After learning a bit more going over all the varnish making literature, I wonder now why the recipe asks for two solvents, turpentine and mineral spirits, instead of just one?
Rafael
The recipes can be found here:
Click to access FC189-P52-55-Wax-finishVD.pdf
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The stuff sold by klean strip is definitely foul smelling. It has a hint of turpentine smell, but then it’s kind of like the same thing in turpentine form as spoiled lunch meat is in lunch meat.
I think turpentine is in the waxes because it flashes off fast, or if it forms an emulsion with stoddard solvent, it changes the combination and probably has some solvent power to clean while waxing.
Even the good smelling stuff is a very strong solvent and more sensitizing that naphtha. The various naphthas and stoddard solvents and mineral spirits, I suppose, can only be sorted out by looking at their SDS and getting boiling points, flash points and autoignition points.
Just on a whim, I looked up boston wax, which says it’s got turpentine in it, but the cost of high quality turpentine is very high -it has *some* turpentine in it but more of other petroleum distillate types.
I’m planning to save my exposure to turpentines for varnishes, though, and not use them in waxes. It’d be a shame to get sensitized to turpentine in general and not be able to use it.
D-limonene is even more powerful (and cheaper than turpentine).
I guess you choose what you prefer in evaporative time based on how you apply the wax. Slow drying solvents give you a lot of time to wax a large surface without rushing to buff, but I don’t really care for that.
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D-limonene, after it starts to oxidize, is a strong allergen, apparently. That’s one I’ll be cautious about.
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It’s an extremely strong solvent with recommended exposure rates at a small fraction of gasoline. It’s smells interesting and sounds innocent. “orange terpenes”. On my jug, it literally says “uses – food additive”
Interesting!!
I thought it might be interesting to try as a one off to turpentine, but have changed my mind. It may be interesting diluted or held back as an option when a very very strong solvent cleaner is needed. But too strong for breathing much of it despite the pleasant smell, or using it in waxes or varnish.
As far as I can tell, it escapes through its plastic jug, just like turpentine will if it’s delivered in a plastic container.
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