I have successfully "invented" a hand balm for myself, which seems to counter the effects of drywall mud, snowy tools, and the generally dry air here. Mixing up beeswax and olive oil at about 1:3 in a saucepan and then pouring it into a flexible plastic container (like a cottage cheese tub) yields a little puck you can rub in your hands. No more cracks. :)
Add some vitamin E oil for real medicine.
Hey, that sounds great! I'll have to give it a try.
I don't mean to sound dumb, but where do you get beeswax? Do you have to talk to the bees, or do they have an agent?
;)
Sounds like a great bullet lub :D.
Crafting stores have beeswax. It's popular for making candles and things like that. I bought a lump of wax "so pure it may contain bees or parts of bees". Hope my balm doesn't sting me. :D
Find a Bee Keeper. Most of them sell their bee wax to outfits that make foundation. They don't generally care who they sell to. :)
I was thinking that the drywall compound would fill any cracks quite nicely ;)
:D
It is my suspicion that no compound on earth could dry out hands worse than drywall mud does. It dries on your skin, then just keeps sucking moisture... of course, if I didn't get so much slopped all over the place I'd probably be better off anyway!
Da best stuff I have found fur yur hands is Bag Balm. They use the stuff ta keep dem moo cows happy. Some of dem farmers have purty ruff milkin' hands.
For some reason, Bag Balm can't be sold in Alberta. Go figger. ???
Dat explains why dar ain't no happy cows in Alberta. :D
Add some Emu oil to it. The stuff makes drywall hand soft
How does one oil an emu? ??? ;D
I tink sawInIt means bird poop. :D
I've tried the emu and didn't have much luck with it.
My fingers are taped most of the winter months.
Bag Balm is heavy duty stuff but too greasy for me, kinda odiferous too. I like Cornhuskers. Mortar is right up there on the list of giving me dishwater hands. One thing a mechanic told me, goop up your hands before you start so the grease isnt sucking into dry skin. You'll clean up prettier ;D.
Are any of you old enough to remember the 'Fuller Brush Man' coming around and displaying his wares? Carried this huge case of the most wonderful things-------so it seemed to a little fella that hardly ever went to town. Mom bought carbolyc salve from him. It came in yellow cans. We always had one can for us and one for the cows. It was about (maybe exactly) the same as bag balm.
I 'member the Fuller brush company, my mom used to get stuff there, dont 'member what.
Doc says to try Aveeno lotion. seems to work pretty well. just dont use anything made with water, that dries you out even more.
My parents always have "cow salve" in the medicine drawer,that they buy from Watkins.It is carbolyc based and it was what my Grandma used on her kids and cows.
We have a tin around here someplace too.
It'll slick yer hair back too!
:D :D
I can help out with a supply of bees wax, but I'm right out of those tiny Q-tips to clean their ears,
Dapper Dan :D :D
I got a friend down in the big city whose wife saw bag balm in one of those fancy mail order catalogs she gets, but you'd have to sell the cow to afford it. Well, I stopped by the feed mill to pick up a fresh can, and guess what. You can get a big can of bag balm, same kind of fancy tin, for less than the small can. Go figure. Anyway, he got alot of bonus points when he gave her a genuine can of bag balm straight from the country. She's a city girl and gets a kick out of those kind of things.
Braver than me. I'd be afraid to kick a city or country girl either! :)
I was kinda tired when I read this the other night- I have a recipe from the state bee inspector that his Polish grandma gave him. It is for beeswax, mineral oil, borax, and distilled water. (Let me know if you want the proportions.)You melt the beeswax together with the mineral oil (like your olive oil and beeswax)- and the borax goes in the water. Each is heated to 162*f I think it is. Then when you mix them together the borax emulsifies the stuff into rich thick creamy stuff that is pourable at that moment but thickens rapidly as it cools.
As written, it just has the faint lovely smell of beeswax.
I have re-done it with various vegetable oils and flower or herbal waters- rosewater, peppermint hydrosol, others- and sometimes I mix essential oils in it.
With the holidays coming up I should make more.
The other thing your recipe reminded me of was the comfrey salve they used to make in WV, and sometimes I use a variation on that to do lip balm (more beeswax) or a perfume/salve. lw
Me and the kids made a salve with St Johns Wort a few years back.They picked a couple of buckets of the flowers and we crushed them down in a quart jar.Poured Olive oil on until it covered the flowers.
Put the jar out in a sunny spot and let it sit a month or so.Poured it all through a sieve with cheese cloth a couple of times.It was a clear Red colour.Later they heated it up on the stove and added a bit of beeswax at a time until it was a soft paste.(ugly pink)
It is good for cuts,etc.
Just heat up your boots and rub some snowpruff into 'em. It's just full of bee's wax, and your boots will thank you too. 8)
Comfrey now there is something I haven't thought about for a long time. It grew wild in W Va. and the locals called it knit bone. I think it saved my life. I had a huge wad of wood imbedded in my hand and the doctors wouln't believe it was there cause it didn't show on an x-ray. They stitched up the wound and sent me home. I cut out 2 stitches and started soaking my hand 3 times a day in comfrey boiled in water from a sulfur tainted well. The stuff that oozed outa there MAN! Found another doctor who did a little incision and out popped this hunk a wood about the size of an acorn. I swear the comfrey saved at least my hand if not more.
I bought some bag bomb, I hate to tell you but it's boot grease.
I have a can downstairs, they call it dubbin.
She won't let me use it in the house, it's too greasy ::) .