How To Make Carnauba Wax
by Leonardo R. Grabkowski
Carnauba wax is often regarded as the highest-quality coating wax. It is used in a wide variety of applications, including automotive waxes and furniture waxes. Carnauba palm trees naturally produce the wax. Making carnauba wax at home requires a little more effort than other waxes, but the wax makes up for it with high quality.
Step 1
Acquire a carnauba palm tree or carnauba palm leaves (see link in Resources). The carnauba palm is native to South America, but nurseries around the United States offer the plants and their leaves. An averaged-sized carnauba palm will cost between $400 and $500 and can produce about 5 lbs. wax per year.
Step 2
Trim the leaves from the plant and allow them to sun dry for 48 to 72 hours. The leaves naturally produce the wax to defend drying out. Vigorously pound the dried leaves to expel the wax. The natural wax will flake off the dried leaves. You can expect to net about 1 lb. carnauba wax from 10 average-sized leaves.
Step 3
Store the wax in a covered container at room temperature. Carnauba wax is often mixed with other ingredients and processed for commercial use; this is strictly for economical reasons, pure carnauba wax is perfectly suitable for household and automotive purposes.
References
Tips
- Carnauba leaves produce a lot of wax; make sure you have extracted every flake of wax from the leaves before discarding them.
Things You'll Need
- Sunny area to dry leaves
- Rubber mallet
Writer Bio
Leonardo R. Grabkowski has been writing professionally for more than four years. Grabkowski attended college in Oregon. He builds websites on the side and has a slight obsession with Drupal, Joomla and Wordpress.
