Tools and Rust

[John Sonksen]

At my shop we regularly use paste wax on tools with large steel surfaces. It keeps rust away and makes the tools nice and slick. We also wax our melamine topped workbenches which allows you to move fairly heavy items on the bench by yourself. The best part is a freshly waxed table won't get glue stuck to it when doing big glue ups. After gluing a butcher block I can just come through with a scraper and all the drops just pop off. I've recently found two more solutions, the Boeshield that was mentioned above and a mixture of paraffin and naphtha. Shave off a 1/2" by 2" chunk of paraffin and leave it in a pint of naphtha until it dissolves. This can be used to spot clean and wax at the same time.

[Mario Proulx]

Thompson's Water Seal works great. It's basically wax disolved in a mineral spirit base. I never have checked to see if it contained silicone, but I doubt it does, since I've used it for years to "wax" my tool beds. I'm still using the same gallon of the stuff I bought some 14-15 years ago... A little goes a long way.

[Chuck Tweedy]

Fine Woodworking has an article on exactly this subject in the current edition.

I've always used conservator's wax, and it works great - for me. Not really a challenging environment in my shop - pretty dry.