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maeln • today at 12:56 PM • 2 replies • view on HN

The issue is that in many cases, this is not what is being sold on Amazon. There is good chinese brand/product (I love my chinese IEM), but when looking for many household items, you will find the white label, probably not compliant with local regulation, type of product. When it is not an outright scam.

I actually have a recent example : I do woodworking and for the last step of finishing some of the thing I build, I use a mixture of beeswax and linseed oil. Beeswax has been harder and harder to find locally. Not so long ago, every hardware shop had some. Now it has been displaced by synthetic product. So unless you know a local beekeeper, you are sol. So, resigned, I went to Amazon. It had a trove of listing for "100% natural beeswax". Turns out, ALL of them are paraffin dyed to look like beeswax. You can report it to Amazon, they don't care. They will reimburse you, but never remove the listing.


Replies

WA9ACE • today at 1:20 PM

I closed my amazon account months ago, but I have also experienced this problem. I have a hiking staff I really like that needs to be re-oiled and waxed. I'm having the darndest time finding both things. The beeswax, and most places seem to only want to sell "boiled" (solvent treated) linseed oil so it cures faster.

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Eisenstein • today at 2:47 PM

Tip for anyone wondering how pure their beeswax is: you can use a blacklight to check its fluorescence:

* https://imgur.com/gallery/beeswax-test-with-uv-lamp-c3uBW3G

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