Galooterati:

Tom Ellis asked:

"Anyone have any idea how long it would take a plane [soaked in] raw oil
to dry well enough to use?"

I don't know about raw oil, but around twenty years ago I bought a "new
old" English smoother, one of dozens of identical planes found in a
barrel in a hardware store completely unused and never finished in any
way. I stopped the mouth with glazier's putty and kept it full of boiled
linseed oil until the oil showed at the ends. As best I remember it was
dry enough to handle and to have been used in a couple of weeks.

As it happens the plane never has been used, but that has nothing to do
with the oil: the problem is that the blade is made out of pot metal.
This was my first wooden plane and I sharpened it and set it and tried
it over and over again trying to get it to work; it was only when I had
other, old, planes to compare with it that I really convinced myself
that the steel was bad and simply wouldn't hold an edge. I've often
remembered bitterly the amount of work I put into that plane before I
tried sharpening it. Someday I'll get a decent blade for it, or maybe
try hardening the one it has.

Before soaking in oil the wood of this plane was very pale, but the oil
turned it a gorgeous dark red. I had a similar experience with my first
bookbinder's sewing frame, also of unfinished beech and many years old
when I bought it: it turned from the palest biscuit to deep red when I
soaked it in oil. Somewhere in my experience I think I have seen two
items from the same piece of wood, soaked in oil immediately after
purchase with fresh-cut surfaces and soaked in oil some years later
after sitting and oxidizing for all that time. Both looked pale-biscuit
before finishing, but the fresh surface didn't darken much with oil
while the old/oxidized surface darkened strikingly to a deep red. In
consequence I have never been quite convinced by the claim that American
beech is paler than European beech: I have seen old/unfinished European
beech as pale as any American beech I have seen, and I have seen
American beech that darkened markedly when an old surface was oiled. I
think the apparent difference is more a matter of different seasoning
and finishing practices than any real difference in the wood.

Tom Conroy Berkeley


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