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My wife has had troubles with her study-room lamp base. It's a crappy imported cast-concrete base that finally disintegrated. Seeing this thing, I'd be REAL careful using any similarly-made exercise barbells made in China....

But I digress. It was time for a sturdy fix.

Here I am transferring the design from the original junk to a new oak crossbar scheme. I'm using dumpster-dive bed-post Oak that my neighbor kindly saved for me

Here is the finished base:

As a side note, that finished Oak base was finished in minimal time (necessary this week due to visitors arriving soon!), and it doesn't smell like oil or varnish. It just has a subtle beeswax odor.... I decided to try out the old-time "polissoir" method that is promoted by web-authors such as Don Williams http://www.donsbarn.com .

We've all heard from Nick, etc., that you can't build up much of a wax coat because new wax dissolves old wax. Well, that's true if it's a wax in a solvent mix. But raw beeswax can build decently, and have a decent grain-filling function.

Here's a paste-wax test followed by the friction-polissoir-beeswax test:

Happy woodworking!

Chris

Interesting project; interesting web site. Thanks for posting both.

I thought I would report on the "hard wax" beeswax finish which was burnished-in with a polissoir (described above).

The Oak piece has held up great!
Here is the year-old lamp-base, and a new experimental octagonal pen on it, having a similar burnished wax finish:
Happy woodworking,
Chris