Home-made wood preservative

[emiff6]

I came across this recipe for garden friendly home-made wood preservative today. It seems easy to make and I think it would work quite well to protect untreated wood especially things like fence posts.

Melt 30g paraffin (presumably it means wax), gently in a double boiler or a bowl over hot water.
Remove from the heat and stir into 3.3 litres of turpentine.
Into this mix stir 120ml linseed oil until well blended.
Paint onto wood as required.

[Farway]

Have you priced this up? How does it compare to commercial wood preservatives?

Turps is not cheap, nor is linseed oil

You could use the free & old fashioned remedy of used engine oil, cue environmental backlash

[Lotus-eater]

Originally Posted by emiff6

I came across this recipe for garden friendly home-made wood preservative today. It seems easy to make and I think it would work quite well to protect untreated wood especially things like fence posts.

Melt 30g paraffin (presumably it means wax), gently in a double boiler or a bowl over hot water.
Remove from the heat and stir into 3.3 litres of turpentine.
Into this mix stir 120ml linseed oil until well blended.
Paint onto wood as required.

Presumably it's a linseed oil based preservative, with the turps and paraffin to help it dry.
I would probably hesitate to use the turps myself, but maybe a turps substitute would do the same job.

It seems a similar thing to what is called "boiled linseed oil", which is LO with solvents and stuff added to aid drying and prevent stickiness IIRC.