# The Use Of Boiled Linseed Oil



## The Gopher

I had some questions that needed answering so i conducted some tests and wrote up the results, here you go.


----------



## tokSick

That' s some good info you give us. Thanks a lot, now i know more about linseed oil.


----------



## Tex-Shooter

Great job and thanks! -- Tex


----------



## Knoll

Engineers rock!


----------



## treefork

Wow. Thanks for the data.


----------



## Rockape66

your excellent work is greatly appreciated, Gopher. Thank you.


----------



## newconvert

that answers my questions very well thanks gopher


----------



## pgandy

Thanks


----------



## Sean

Thanks Gopher, very informative and I'll try some of my new builds with this info in mind.


----------



## Karok01

Archived in my personal files, thanks much for the study!








BTW Engineers worry about tests to keep non-engineers safe....Bridges for example....just saying.....


----------



## AKLEIN

Thanks for the good info.

Arne


----------



## August West

I know that linseed oil is not the best finish but the color it turns some woods, especially oak, and the smell are things I am addicted to. Thank you for your work that was very informative. Chris


----------



## Dayhiker

I have a differing view of linseed oil.

I only use raw linseed oil and I never soak my slingshots in pools of it. I do not like the added thinners and chemicals in boiled linseed oil, which are designed to make the oil cure faster and increase penetration. I feel this is unnatural and consider the additives as pollutants.

Only certain woods take to linseed oil well, red oak being the best I know of. Beech does, too.

It is well known that linseed oil takes about 3 months to fully cure -- or "harden".

I do not use rags, I apply with my hands. I then check it in a few hours. If all the oil has been absorbed, I give it another coat. If the slingshot is dry the next day, I coat it again. I keep doing this -- sometimes for several days -- until some oil remains on the surface. This I try to rub into the slingshot. If the wood does not want to take it, I just wipe it off with a rag.
The next day, I heat the piece with a heat gun until some of the oil resurfaces and I rub it back into the wood. At this point I rub it a lot with my hands to drive the oil into the wood and bring it to a nice luster. Then I wait a few days and polish it with my dremel, or by hand with an old tee shirt.

The raw oil is thick and driven into the wood in a controlled way like this, it is much like a hard wax once it's fully cured. I use it right away, but the curing is going on for months.

It is my opinion that really deep penetration is not desirable as it serves no purpose beyond what the wood wants to take. One of my friends here on the forum soaked a slingshot in linseed oil (boiled) for a long time and the wood was so absorbent that it smelled like paint thinner and the wood was dull when I got it in the mail. It looked like an oil-soaked board one might find in an old machine shop, and continued to smell for days. I finally gave it several soaks with lighter fluid and dried it out for a few days. Then when I heated it some oil still came to the surface, which I rubbed to a nice patina with my hands. The wood looked better and never smelled bad after that.

I don't always finish this way. I am more likely to use maybe two coats of linseed oil, then a coat of my linseed/beeswax mix, which doesn't polish up too well, but gives a nice hard finish, very water proof. If you reapply the mix once in a while a nice luster forms and that is good enough for me.


----------



## August West

Dayhiker,
Can you please elaborate on your linseed/beeswax mix? Thanks


----------



## Dayhiker

August West said:


> Dayhiker,
> Can you please elaborate on your linseed/beeswax mix? Thanks


Sure thing, Bud.


----------



## pop shot

Here's a liquid wax recipe i gleaned from perusing the roundtable talks. It's from Nathan. 1 part BLO 1 part raw tung, on a double boiler, add grated beeswax til the solution will coat a spoon. I tried it, works great. linseed and tung will both harden/cure with time. the beeswax in solution is just gravy at that point, extra protection. pretty similar to DH's


----------



## August West

Thanks guys I just finished a chalice in oak and am going to try the beeswax method. I really don't like most modern finishes, they just look like plastic. Old musical instruments and hand rubbed gunstocks are what I am shooting for. Chris


----------



## Dayhiker

Chris, although I do use poly on softer woods and sometimes CA glue in order to protect the surface from scratching and marring, I don't really like them for outdoor use because they are prone to cracking and letting moisture in under the surface.

It is true that linseed oil isn't the best protection against moisture, but as long as you're not gonna leave it out in the rain for a couple of weeks, it does a good enough job. But with the beeswax, it's much more moisture resistant.


----------



## The Gopher

Thanks DH, I think the end result is similar, i usually soak for a day, followed by hand rubbing till there is neither oil soaking in or leaching out, then a wax polish of some sort.

I'll have to agree on the additives of "boiled" linseed oil, i wish they weren't there, but Raw linseed oil is so much harder to find and more expensive, I should probably just bite the bullet and get some.

Thanks again for your input.


----------



## RedRubber

Good thread, excellent information!


----------



## drfrancov

Nice info guys. Thanks!


----------



## BootMuck

Nice info!

I used the same basic method dayhiker laid out above. 
Two questions though:
What grit sand paper do you sand to? When do you sand?

I've tried both soaking and hand rubbing methods. Hand rubbing was easy and less messy (besides hand washing).

I only sanded my last natural to 600 grit before oil rub (5 coats 6-8hrs apart until no more absorption) and the finish was as smooth as my last CA finish (sanded to 4000 grit).

Thanks for any input


----------



## Rapier

One of the things that seems to be missing is the way BLO is reapplied. Often at first and then less often over time. Eventually (sometimes years and after many reapplications) the wood will saturate and end up very dense and hard. This is it's main benifit. Try to reapply a polyurithane? You first have to get rid of the old stuff with a paint thinner or sanding. With BLO and other oils just wipe some more on. Obviously some woods work better with this finish than others. Crickerters will apply and reapply linseed oil to very high grade English Willow cricket bats and can take a year befor using them! I made a bokken from a plum tree branch which was let to dry from green wood for over a year then over the next year I applied many coats of BLO letting cure off for at least a week or two in between. When I finally took it to the dojo it was immeadiatly banned after utterly destroying several high quality japanese oak bokkens! I think the cured oil binds the timbre fibres preventing splits etc...
Just my experience with the stuff.















You can see the waxy texture and the many bruses from full force contact with other bokkens but no splits...


----------



## rockscorpio125b

Hi everyone, instead of using linseed oil Which I havent at home I tried sunflower oil . But 2 weeks after the removal from bath it´s still soaked with oil is it normal?


----------

