The correct or easiest way to do the hot oil or blacksmith's oiling treatment.
  • Heat area or item to black heat, much more and your just wasting gas
  • Be sure you are in an area that will not be damaged by smoke or set off alarms
  • USE ONLY FOOD GRADE OILS for anything that has a chance of coming in to contact with food,drink or peoples mouths
  • You can spray the oil on, brush it on with only a natural bristle brush(no plastic), or while wearing and old welders glove wipe it on with a rag(cotton)
  • Repeat as needed to achieve the look you want
  • Make sure that you get all the nooks and crannies, back sides of scroll welds etc.
  • Seal with a good grade of paste wax, Johnson's, Butchers (its a bowling alley wax)
  • Coat with a clear sealer if you like permalac, Imron


As to the oils used,Linseed oil, canola, or other cooking oil is better, yes black heat will do the job. Canola has a high smoke temp as does olive oil.

Motor oils now a days contain to many unknown chemicals.(additives) and the natural motor oils are now being adjusted with the synthetics and who knows what they might do to a body when inhaled after being cooked.

Used motor oil,will contain heavy metals and what not.
If you want to use new motor oil use only non synthetic type.

Outside probably of a real good prep job and a top coating of your choice.
What it does is,it adds carbon to the surface of the metal as the pores opened up under the heat.
If you are using in the kitchen or pop corn popper for fireplace etc use only food safe type vegetable oils.

What they never say, or tell you in the books is all oil finishes, hot cold or lukewarm will be needed to be renewed every couple of years.

What else they don't tell you is if the prep job sucked and there was rust or moisture under it you will have continued oxidation(rust).

Two tricks to slow rusting of out door work is use hot rolled steel. The kind that has the mill scale on it. it is pickled as one of the last steps in processing it and the scale helps slow up the oxidation. As long as you don't need a shiny surface. And before you put paint or a clear coat on the item wipe it down with acetone to remove all traces of moisture and oils form fingers prints.
No matter if you are planning a rust patina,a powder coat, a paint job or a hot oil and wax finish. prepping is 99.6% of the job.

Something else, no matter who or what they say their wax, clear coat, or paint will last in the sun for x numbers of years. It won't make half of what they claim. 20 years of painting signs and nothing ever lived up to their claims.

As far as waxes go there are the colored waxes used, Renaissance waxes being the one that is the most used,along with the butchers wax. You can try heating and liquefying the waxes and shoe polish to get a good mixture, smooth mix. For a black or brown colors then cover with another coat of sealing wax.
Mixing wax with the oil wouldn't do much. A separate coat of wax after the oil will give better service

The Carnuba waxes are some of the hardest waxes found in nature.
But the problem has become as fast as they can, the manufactures are either changing the formula's to chemically produced micro crystalline waxes were all of the properties can be fine tuned.

One thing that I think may be of some promise, but would have to be reapplied every so often is. One of the new silicone based acrylic car waxes after the patina is done. Like the 52car wash kinds or the other ones.

Since they won't let much stick to them, have UV protection in them and offer some anti oxidants. They should have a good or better life span. Than some of the clear acrylic sprays, under a wider set of conditions. Even Armour All wiped on, will give a good finish. Its just to bad it is designed to be reapplied so often, buts that to sell more Armour

I do know two things about the silicone high performance car/truck waxes. They are a bugger to remove from a surface, for paint prep and not much will stick to them. So make sure you have everything done as far as the finishing colors or patina's before applying the silicone waxes. One very big note of caution you may want to try out the silicone or other car waxes on a piece of scrap steel finished with the material you will use. As some will get cloudy and some aren't made to be applied to anything but a painted surface!