Friday, February 02, 2007
OLIVE OIL & BEES WAX HAND SALVE!
Olive Oil & Bees Wax Hand Salve!
First, I must give credit where credit is due. I first learned about this hand-restoring salve while going to school in New Hampshire. One January the temp remained below 5F for nearly two weeks. My hands were cracking and the pain especially at the fingertips was very uncomfortable. While picking up a few things at the local hardware store I happened across a little metal tin that read Grandpa Gillian’s Hand Salve. The entire list of ingredients consisted of Olive Oil and Bees Wax. I picked some up and almost instantly my hands felt better. Within a very short time, the rough and chapped skin along with the painful cracks had gone away. Later, I bought another.
After buying a few more I decided that I should just try to make the stuff myself. The difficult thing is getting the proportions right but here’s what seems to work.
Ingredients:
Get some Bees Wax. Craft stores sell this. The unrefined kind seems to work best. It has a yellowish brown tint.
Get some Olive Oil. We use the Extra Virgin kind for cooking a whole bunch at home, so I’ve mostly used that, but any type of olive oil will work fine.
Get a little metal tin. I use one that had little Citrus Sour candies in it. There are a bunch of these types of containers with some type of candy or mint in them, readily available in Supermarket checkout isles.
Making the salve:
With the tin emptied of its contents, place it on a front stove burner and fill it about half way with oil. Then, mix in a good bit of wax. Put burner on low. It doesn’t take a whole lot of heat to melt the wax. Stir gently with a wooden tooth pick. The ratio is close to one to one. Use a set of cooking tongs to CAREFULLY pick up the tin by the sides once all the wax has melted. Place it on a plate and then set the plate in the fridge and then wait about twenty minutes.
By this time it will have solidified and you can test the consistency by scraping a little with the back of your finger nail. It should be a just little on the mushy side. This is the stuff! Try using it after you wash your hands when they’re still a little damp, by scraping some on to your thumbnail and then rubbing it into your hands. A little goes a long way. It will feel greasy at first, but that will go away in a few minutes leaving your hands feeling good!
Tips:
If the mixture turned out too cakey and brittle, that means that there’s too much wax in it. Remove some wax and add more oil. Re-melt and cool and try again. Similarly, if the mix turns out too oily, take out some, put in more wax, re-melt and cool. Also, a little Petroleum Jelly (a little scoop using the butter knife) added to the mix while melting will help smooth out the consistency.
ENJOY!
First, I must give credit where credit is due. I first learned about this hand-restoring salve while going to school in New Hampshire. One January the temp remained below 5F for nearly two weeks. My hands were cracking and the pain especially at the fingertips was very uncomfortable. While picking up a few things at the local hardware store I happened across a little metal tin that read Grandpa Gillian’s Hand Salve. The entire list of ingredients consisted of Olive Oil and Bees Wax. I picked some up and almost instantly my hands felt better. Within a very short time, the rough and chapped skin along with the painful cracks had gone away. Later, I bought another.
After buying a few more I decided that I should just try to make the stuff myself. The difficult thing is getting the proportions right but here’s what seems to work.
Ingredients:
Get some Bees Wax. Craft stores sell this. The unrefined kind seems to work best. It has a yellowish brown tint.
Get some Olive Oil. We use the Extra Virgin kind for cooking a whole bunch at home, so I’ve mostly used that, but any type of olive oil will work fine.
Get a little metal tin. I use one that had little Citrus Sour candies in it. There are a bunch of these types of containers with some type of candy or mint in them, readily available in Supermarket checkout isles.
Making the salve:
With the tin emptied of its contents, place it on a front stove burner and fill it about half way with oil. Then, mix in a good bit of wax. Put burner on low. It doesn’t take a whole lot of heat to melt the wax. Stir gently with a wooden tooth pick. The ratio is close to one to one. Use a set of cooking tongs to CAREFULLY pick up the tin by the sides once all the wax has melted. Place it on a plate and then set the plate in the fridge and then wait about twenty minutes.
By this time it will have solidified and you can test the consistency by scraping a little with the back of your finger nail. It should be a just little on the mushy side. This is the stuff! Try using it after you wash your hands when they’re still a little damp, by scraping some on to your thumbnail and then rubbing it into your hands. A little goes a long way. It will feel greasy at first, but that will go away in a few minutes leaving your hands feeling good!
Tips:
If the mixture turned out too cakey and brittle, that means that there’s too much wax in it. Remove some wax and add more oil. Re-melt and cool and try again. Similarly, if the mix turns out too oily, take out some, put in more wax, re-melt and cool. Also, a little Petroleum Jelly (a little scoop using the butter knife) added to the mix while melting will help smooth out the consistency.
ENJOY!
Posted by Ted Zarras at 5:55 PM
1 Comments:
I tried this! It's great! Thanks so much for this information. My husband and I both use it.
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