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My intrigue took me to the Internet and I spent several hours researching how a car wax is made and what ingredients can be used. I also placed a post on an Internet forum, "Detailing World" where my username is rubbishboy hence the name. I asked for advice hoping someone had been intrigued as much as myself at some point. As luck would have it someone had been, Dom at Dodo Juice and he gave some great advice and even a recipe that he had tried once.
I spent many lunch breaks , evenings, and weekends researching ingredients and experimenting with recipes to get a wax that was usable. I think some people actually doubted my sanity, and still do. I was looking for ingredients every where, looking for equipment that would be worth experimenting with, and ended up spending quite a substantial amount of money on equipment and ingredients.
I posted some of my results onto the forum, and these were seen by Dom at Dodo Juice, he offered to evaluate the wax for me and give me some feedback. He was quite impressed with what I had achieved at home. With no previous chemistry knowledge and no lab equipment, I had managed to impress a professional wax maker!
Juiced Edition.
Until this point I hadn't really considered actually selling my wax, but Dom suggested we work together to produce Rubbish Boy's Original Edition and Rubbish Boy's Juiced Edition, the Dodo Juice version of my wax tweaked by Dodo Juice's chemists to try and make it even better and more mainstream. Brightly coloured, scented and a softer texture The Juiced Edition wax was completed and tested and went on sale on the 30th November 2007. We thought it would be fun to let you decide which is best, the handmade at home version or the professional, production version, you decide.
What's in Original Edition?
The basis of the wax is carnauba wax, I think the best ingredient for a car wax. It's not an easy wax to work with though, in it's raw state it is very, very hard. To make it manageable it is softened with other waxes, in this recipe I used beeswax, a great wax in it's own right.
Using just these two waxes would still make a wax that is unusable, so we need to add some lubrication and some form of solvent to keep the wax soft and make the wax cure when applied. I have used a combination of various oils:- Coconut oil, orange oil (this gives it that orange smell), and sunflower oil all help to soften it and make the wax what it is.
How Much Carnauba?
Okay, lets talk about carnauba content. It's a sore point for the majority of manufacturers, if they tell you how much is in the total product you won't be impressed or it may look less than their competitors. So they tell you how much carnauba is in their product by percentage of wax content rather than total finished product, or by volume, but then they don't say whether this was measured using dry ingredients or wet ingredients. Very confusing! It really does sound more impressive if you have 100% carnauba wax rather than 3% doesn't it?
Original Edition contains 28% carnauba of total finished product by weight (e.g 100g of product contains 28g of carnauba). Or if you want to compare like for like, 42% by volume or 83% of the wax content is carnauba. I could have used 100% carnauba but then I wouldn't have been able to include any beeswax, and I like beeswax too!
Applying Original Edition.
It may be a little bit different to other products you have tried and it does require a slightly different application technique to mainstream waxes. It is a hard wax but has plenty of lubrication and oils that once worked will make the wax soft and easily applied.
Here is how I apply Original Edition.
Original Edition uses quite a slow evaporating solvent which gives you plenty of time to apply the wax, but also means it doesn't like to be rushed while curing, so leave plenty of time, about 20 to 30 minutes depending on environment, before removing the excess wax, use a good quality microfibre cloth. Once removed give the finish a buff with a clean soft microfibre cloth which will bring the lustre and depth to the paint.
To add a little extra to the finish, after buffing leave the wax to cure for a few hours, then give the paintwork a wipe down with a quick detailer and give it another final buff up.
You can also add extra coats for extra durability, I recommend leaving 24 hours between coats to give the first a chance to properly cure.
Have a read of this page all about applying a carnauba wax or Buy Rubbish Boy's Original Edition .
