If corn oil is made with corn and peanut oil is made with peanuts, then what is baby oil made with?
The answer: Baby oil is made with mineral oil and fragrance by industrial professionals; babies don't have the fine motor skills or chemistry knowledge to create baby oil, duh.
Baby oil is useful for a lot of things beyond baby bottoms. It'll smooth, soften, lubricate, refinish, clean, and so much more. It also has some usual uses for which it really oughtn't be used. Read on for some tips and tricks that'll help you step your baby oil game up.
Remove these ads by
Signing UpStep 1: First, some don'ts
Don't use baby oil to tan. Melanoma looks bad enough without being shiny.
Don't eat baby oil. It has laxative properties and likely doesn't taste delicious. (Mineral oil is safe for human consumption, but only up to around 100 mg. Many of those milligrams come from food-grade mineral oil that's used in baking and other industrial food processing places because it's odorless and tasteless. My guess is that baby oil mineral oil isn't food-grade. Stay safe: don't guzzle a bottle of it.)
Don't use it in your 2-stroke engine.
Don't aim baby oil at helicopter pilots. Wait... that's for lasers. But you should still be careful around helicopter pilots with baby oil. It can be a slip-fall hazard, and pilots prefer the scent of aviation fuel.


















































Visit Our Store »
Go Pro Today »




Creaking is the result of shrinking of the wood caused by loss of moisture. If appropriate, oil can swell the wood and reduce noise. On the West Coast, decks often look horrible in the summer, after they've dried and shrunk back down, revealing cracks and splits. Oil, when it soaks into the wood, has the same swelling effect as water, but without rot problems and it doesn't evaporate at the rate water does.
Similar to with decks, mineral oil is good for butcher blocks. I have restored them by merely slathering on mineral oil (not adulterated mineral oil, like baby oil). After soaking for a few days, all the separations between pieces and cracks from drying disappeared.
I need to go to bed, this is getting to me!!
Hardening oils include oils like tung oil and boiled linseed oil. While both would be poisonous to ingest. "Boiled" linseed oil is flax seed oil with heavy metals added to speed hardening (polymerization). It tends to darken wood. Tung oil often has heavy metals added too, but would be toxic without them. It and walnut oil do not darken wood like boiled linseed oil.
Hardening oils take time to harden. If they are pre-polymerized and have hardeners added, they will dry quicker. In any event, all excess hardening oil should be wiped off, or it will orange peel, and will take longer to dry.
Many people use olive oil to treat wood food preparation surfaces. However, olive oil goes rancid (lots of free radicals) from exposure to air. You can usually smell a breadboard treated with olive oil.
When any standard finish (e.g., shellac, polyurethane, lacquer, hardening oil) hardens, it is considered safe for food grade finishes.
While I agree mineral oil probably isn't something we should be drinking, the amount you would get on your food, after treating a butcher block or bread board would not be significant. Too, after treating with mineral oil, you can put a hardening oil or other oil compatible finish on to seal in the oil.
Linseed oil is made from flax seed. After it is put through a process, which often includes adding heavy metal driers, it is called boiled linseed oil.
Like I said before, pure linseed oil will still harden/oxidize/set, but a lot slower than boiled linseed.
While oil works perfectly well enough, in a floor it also attracts dirt and eventually becomes sludge whereas the dry lubricants do not.
The same goes for lubricating door lock keyholes.
If the squeaking is from subflooring moving against the support beam, talc will do nothing to solve the problem, since the talc could not get to the trouble spot.
If your furniture isn't coated with wax, whether from Pledge or some other product, you can apply "tung oil finish," pure tung oil (polymerized is preferred) or boiled linseed oil. The latter two may emit an odor longer than the finish, which is just thinned linseed oil with resin, thus, a wiping finish. These will harden and, if thinned for application (the finish is already thinned), will soak in just as the mineral oil would.
Boiled linseed oil (just flax seed oil with [toxic] driers added, and which has been polymerized by blowing air through it so it appears to be boiling, thus the name "boiled linseed oil") and tung, or Chinese oil, as well as products that incorporate those names (e.g., "Tung Oil Finish") are hardening finishes. Boiled linseed oil and tung oil are common ingredients in high end finishes.
Since the last of my post talked about hardening oils, as opposed to [non hardening] baby oil, I presumed people would note the difference, The difference in the types of oils is noted several posts down from this.
For reference, below is a quote from.jamestowndistributors site. Other sites can be found that describe the process. Batches could be ruined by overheating, such as by bringing them to a boil. That may be why a finish which would not normally melt "gave more traction when hot.
"'Boiled' linseed oil, though, is not boiled. The actual boiling of some varnish oils changes their drying characteristics. With linseed oil, though, it is the addition of certain solvents that causes linseed oil to dry more quickly, acting as if it were boiled. This makes it a better product for preserving tool handles, decks, and furniture. I suppose they should have named it "sort-of-boiled linseed oil", or "kinda-like-boiled-but-not-really-boiled linseed oil". Boiled Linseed Oil is used as a natural wood finish and preservative, either alone or with other oils and solvents. Mixed with oil based paints and varnishes, it increases gloss and improves leveling and durability. A mixture of 2 parts boiled linseed oil to one part turpentine creates a semi-gloss wood polish for furniture. Can also be mixed with mineral spirits."
As elsewhere noted, the term boiled, when applied to boiled linseed oil, is said to be based on that the oil appeared to be boiling, when air was blown through the oil to speed polymerization.
Also, to add to the list again (and as unlikely as this sounds it's a good one)...
If you eat something really spicy and your mouth is burning and you can't stand it, if you swill some baby oil in your mouth and spit it out it will take the burning away.
This is because the capsicum is usually an oil so it's hydrophobic. Water has no reaction, doesn't suspend it so doesn't lessen the burning. Swilling baby oil suspends the capsicum, "waters it down" and allows you to spit it out.
All that to say: if you find out what cleaned out the honey = I'd sure like to know! :*)
http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/hl-vs/iyh-vsv/med/ear-oreille-eng.php
I have personal experience with ear candles and can say honestly that the draft created does remove wax from my ears. Once, out of curiosity, I purchased some just to unwind them and see if all the junk that I was seeing at the end of a session had already been snuck into the ear candle. None of the wax that appeared to have been removed from my ears was pre-existing in any of the four I disemboweled.
Do I think they are dangerous? I think anything involving fire has the potential to do great harm. The candles I've used do not contain excess wax, I know this because there have never been wax droplets after/during their burning. When I run the tip of my finger on the inside of the wide end of an ear candle I feel the material only because the wax coating is on the outside.