Furniture Polish

I have a couple older wood pieces around the place - a late 50's HiFi set, a similarly aged night table, a somewhat newer, solid oak dinning set.  All of them are used and all have clearly been dying for lack of a good, rehydrating polish.  But my parents run a furniture refinishing shop and I know from growing up around that business that your average over the counter furniture polish is a very bad idea, especially if you have any plans at all to refinish in the future.  All of these older pieces are going to get refinished at some point.  The problem with most commercial polish is that most of them contain silicone to keep dust away.  Silicone gets into the grain of the wood, forever to remain.  You can strip a piece all you want, it will look clean to the eye, but the instant you put new lacquer/varnish/shellac/polyurethane on it, you'll get these oily spots called fish eyes in the trade all over the place.  It isn't pretty and there's literally no way to fix it.

So I've opted for no polish at all rather than risk fish eyes on my solid wood pieces in the future.  Until two days ago when I just happened to stumble upon the easiest furniture polish recipe ever.  I mixed up a batch immediately and gloried in the results.  My good wood furniture looks absolutely beautiful.

The recipe is, 3 parts any oil you happen to have around (I used olive oil but seriously, any vegetable based oil will work) to 1 part lemon juice.  You can put it in a spray bottle, remembering to shake before using, or you can put it in a little jar and upend it over your dusting rag (this was my option since I didn't have any spare spray bottles lying around).  It goes on super easy, absorbs into the wood within a couple minutes, and there are no harsh fumes or artificial scents to foul the air.  I absolutely love this stuff