We made our own water repellent for wood, from a recipe we found in The Old House Journal Guide To Restoration (1992, Penguin Books). The recipe was developed by the Forest Products Laboratory in Madison Wisconsin (your federal tax dollars being put to good use, for a change). The ingredients are:
We used a cheese grater to shave the wax, and a food scale to determine the correct amount. The shaved wax must be added to the varnish (polyurethane works fine) and stirred to dissolve it. Then that solution was added to a pail containing 3 quarts of mineral spirits. It was mixed and more mineral spirits was added to make one gallon of liquid. To apply the repellent to long boards, we bought a 10-foot section of PVC rain gutter and 2 end caps. The PVC end caps we used had a rubber gasket that sealed well to the gutter, so the liquid never leaked out. We filled the gutter with about 3 inches of liquid and then dipped the boards in. This worked well for the porch flooring we treated. For larger items we simply painted on the repellent solution. We let the wood dry for a couple of hours before giving it a coating of oil-based primer.
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