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251055 | Christopher Dunn <christopherdunn123@g...> | 2014‑10‑14 | Soaking wood in linseed oil |
Galoots I'd like to soak some wooden tools I'm making in linseed oil. I was reading "Spons on Carpentry and Joinery" and it says: "The wooden parts of tools, such as the stocks of planes and handles or chisels, are often made to have a nice appearance by French polishing; but this adds nothing to their durability. A much better plan is to let them soak in linseed oil for a week, and rub them with a cloth for a few minutes every day for a week or two. This produces a beautiful surface, and at the same time exerts a solidifying and preservative action on the wood" Bob Flexner's book "Understanding wood finishing" says: "You can put a straight grained piece of wood into a jar containing a half-inch of oil finish and the finish will eventually work its way up through the wood and come out the top. Only if the finish cures hard in the wood, preventing further penetration, or if it hardens in the jar, or if it evaporates will the penetration be stopped." So I decided to try a piece of wood. I filled a jar with about 1" of linseed oil, and put a 12" x 1" x 1/2" piece of red maple into it (so 11" were in air). Here are the results. day 1: about 3" of penetration, and the 3" was fairly uniform over the width day 2: about 1" more, but only in a narrow section (not uniform over the width) day 3: the narrow section grew 1/8" in length days 4 - 8: unchanged day 9: the cats knocked over the jar and made a mess The linseed oil was from a health food store, so it contained no metallic driers, and it never hardened in the jar, but the viscosity did seem to increase. What am I doing wrong? Should I completely immerse the wood? Or should some end grain be exposed to air? Thank you for your responses in advance, Chris |
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251057 | Don Schwartz <dks@t...> | 2014‑10‑14 | Re: Soaking wood in linseed oil |
On 10/14/2014 9:04 AM, Christopher Dunn wrote: > I'd like to soak some wooden tools I'm making in linseed oil. I was > reading "Spons on Carpentry and Joinery" and it says: > > "The wooden parts of tools, such as the stocks of planes and handles > or chisels, are often made to have a nice appearance by French > polishing; but this adds nothing to their durability. A much better > plan is to let them soak in linseed oil for a week, and rub them with > a cloth for a few minutes every day for a week or two. This produces a > beautiful surface, and at the same time exerts a solidifying and > preservative action on the wood" > > Bob Flexner's book "Understanding wood finishing" says: > > "You can put a straight grained piece of wood into a jar containing a > half-inch of oil finish and the finish will eventually work its way up > through the wood and come out the top. Only if the finish cures hard > in the wood, preventing further penetration, or if it hardens in the > jar, or if it evaporates will the penetration be stopped." > Can't answer your question. But IIIRC, we have been told that BLO promotes fungal growth over the long term, so you might want to reconsider soaking your tools in it. Can't seem to locate the source of that info just now. For my part, I have soaked the throats of old woodies a few times, and it closed up visible splits. These tools were neither collectible nor of my own make so any downside is minimal, and I've not noticed any sign of fungus in them. FWIW Don |
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251061 | Michael Blair <branson2@s...> | 2014‑10‑14 | Re: Soaking wood in linseed oil |
I've heard that BLO promotes some kind of fungal growth over time, and museum standards prohibit use of BLO. But it seems the operant word here is it *might* promote fungal growth. I've never seen any fungal rot on linseed oiled wooden tools. I have one plane that is over 200 years old, and I know it was treated with linseed oil. Before they learned the error of their ways, museum practices did use BLO. I don't know about soaking in linseed oil though. Seems unnecessary. I wipe tools down with it, let it dry, and maybe put on a couple more coats. But if you want to take the BLO more deeply into the wood, another now abandoned museum practice was to mix BLO with an equal amount of turpentine to increase penetration. I've done this with a number of old tools and found it efficient. Put enough on to soak in, repeat a few times. A coat of pure BLO after the mixture has dried will take care of the surface. Mike in Sacto |
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251062 | Ed Minch <ruby@m...> | 2014‑10‑14 | Re: Soaking wood in linseed oil |
Didn’t someone say that this practice increases the weight of a plane considerably? Ed Minch On Oct 14, 2014, at 11:55 AM, Don Schwartz |
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251064 | Kirk Eppler <eppler.kirk@g...> | 2014‑10‑14 | Re: Soaking wood in linseed oil |
On Tue, Oct 14, 2014 at 8:04 AM, Christopher Dunn < christopherdunn123@g...> wrote: > day 9: the cats knocked over the jar and made a mess Ahh, Galoot Science at its best. In my case it would be dogs, but same idea. -- Kirk Eppler, Another day starting way too early with Telecons |
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251066 | Christopher Dunn <christopherdunn123@g...> | 2014‑10‑14 | Re: Soaking wood in linseed oil |
On Tue, Oct 14, 2014 at 8:04 AM, Christopher Dunn |
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251068 | Mark Fortune <sparkler@e...> | 2014‑10‑14 | Re: Soaking wood in linseed oil |
“...I've not noticed any sign of fungus in them.” I use blo on pretty much everything, I live in Ireland where its always damp, no central heating and the only place that fungal growth has ever been apparent is on some of my carving tools that I keep in a drawer in my house - they rarely see the light of day- the drawer thickness and length is just big enough to fit the tools in, I have noticed very slight fine whitish fungal film on the handles, I have wooden planes and heaps of other wooden handled tools in the same cabinet in larger drawers and cupboards and there is never any sign of mould. Keep meaning to chuck in a couple of silica sachets in the said drawer - that should help …right? |
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251071 | neilshaw@a... | 2014‑10‑14 | Re: Soaking wood in linseed oil |
Snip . A much better plan is to let them soak in linseed oil for a week, and rub them with a cloth for a few minutes every day for a week or two. This produces a beautiful surface, and at the same time exerts a solidifying and preservative action on the wood" Snip I remember reading somewhere that new wooden plane bodies could be taken to an "ironmongers" and for a fee left immersed in a barrel of linseed oil reserved for this purpose. My linking this with the word ironmonger probably means a UK source but I can't find it at the moment Neil |
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251101 | scott grandstaff <scottg@s...> | 2014‑10‑15 | Re: Soaking wood in linseed oil |
I love boiled linseed oil. But I only love it for color. BLO helps bleed woods' natural color onto itself, and bring it out. One or two wiped coats (wipe on, wipe off) is all you get though. More is not better. I have learned over years and bitter experience, that BLO wants something else on top of it to hold that color. Something that was once beautifully rich can turn into grungy looking muck if you don't rub off all excess, let that dry, and overcoat the oil with shellac, varnish or lacquer. Oil with no dryer basically never dries. Or rather it takes so long to dry that it gives all manner of things time to collect or grow and stain the crap out of your work. Even BOL with dryer takes so long to dry, that too much of it invites the same thing. and, No, you can't take a crappy piece of wood and make it rosewood by soaking it in a barrel of oil, whatever somebodies granny said or some newbie woodworker heard and repeated. If you want rosewood, just go get some rosewood and make your tool out of that instead. If you want to stabilize punky wood (spalted) into a slightly more durable object? Thin down shellac, varnish or lacquer with the proper solvent and spoon or eyedropper it onto the wood. 4 to one solvent to start, so it soaks in deepest. Couple coats of that. Then 3 to one solvent, and so on. It will never be as strong as sound wood, but you don't always need full strength wood and the colors of spalt can be dynamite. No this treatment won't make it rosewood either. Once again, if you want rosewood, use rosewood. yours Scott -- ******************************* Scott Grandstaff Box 409 Happy Camp, Ca 96039 scottg@s... http://www.snowcrest.n et/kitty/sgrandstaff/ http://www.snowcr est.net/kitty/hpages/index.html ----- No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 2014.0.4765 / Virus Database: 4040/8390 - Release Date: 10/14/14 |
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251102 | JAMES THOMPSON <oldmillrat@m...> | 2014‑10‑15 | Re: Soaking wood in linseed oil |
On Oct 15, 2014, at 9:45 AM, scott grandstaff |
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251103 | scott grandstaff <scottg@s...> | 2014‑10‑15 | Re: Soaking wood in linseed oil |
Oh this is cool. Now I get to piggyback onto what Jim said! Jim is absolutely right. His dye technique makes a very good approximation of rosewood's appearance. He taught me to use it, and I do use it. And lots of times you don't really need the strength of rosewood, merely the appearance. Other times, when the strength of rosewood is critical, you can use one of the other lighter colored rosewoods, or nearby rosewood relatives, then dye this to look more like Brazilian or at least Indian rosewood. Bolivian rosewood, bubinga, SE Asian rosewood, etc etc. These can be worked and dyed and will serve quite well. Honduran rosewood is actually harder and stronger than either Brazilian or Indian rosewood by a fairly wide margin. It just isn't quite as pretty. Not bad looking at all, just not -quite- as pretty. I won't dye or otherwise try to artificially color Honduran rosewood though. Its good enough. yours Scott -- ******************************* Scott Grandstaff Box 409 Happy Camp, Ca 96039 scottg@s... http://www.snowcrest.n et/kitty/sgrandstaff/ http://www.snowcr est.net/kitty/hpages/index.html ----- No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 2014.0.4765 / Virus Database: 4040/8390 - Release Date: 10/14/14 |
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251109 | Malcolm Thomas <idraconus@i...> | 2014‑10‑16 | Re: Soaking wood in linseed oil |
Oh, just so that I am 100% clear here - when you all refer to BLO, you are referring to the over-the-counter bottled BLO you buy in the hardware store ?? or, are you guys actually boiling your own linseed oil - because we simply like the old ways :-) ??? Sorry for the GIT-ish type question.. Cheers Mal |
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251111 | Michael Blair <branson2@s...> | 2014‑10‑16 | Re: Soaking wood in linseed oil |
I'm talking about the over-the-counter stuff. I understand that there was a heating treatment used in Ye Olde Dayes for linseed oil, but today's BLO is "boiled" by adding dryers to flax seed oil so that it will oxidize and harden. Me, I have too many other things to do than to boil down flax seed oil. Mike in Sacto |
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251112 | Malcolm Thomas <idraconus@i...> | 2014‑10‑16 | Re: Soaking wood in linseed oil |
i am so glad to hear that, Mike :-) Cheers, Mal Sent using Mail on iPad 2 > On 16 Oct 2014, at 19:19, Michael Blair |
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251114 | Yorkshireman <yorkshireman@y...> | 2014‑10‑16 | Re: Soaking wood in linseed oil |
Boiled Linseed Oil is a popular topic on this list. Its something we all swear by and at. Here are some of my ramblings on the topic. Worth the coins off a dead mans eyes. (tuppence, Paddy) Way back when, BAWI - (Before America Was Invented) using the oil from Linseed was a good way of getting a finish onto wooden artefacts. The thing about LO is that it naturally polymerises. That's modern speak for 'it dries' - unlike olive oil, which doesn't. If you want your refectory table to resist the ingress of nasty stuff that goes rancid or leaves unsightly stains you give it a coat of something - wax is good, and comes in handy, self replenishing packages called skips. Painful to collect unless you know how to dispossess the original owners. Linseed oil is better than wax though, as it doesn't come off as easily, once hard. Back in the xxth Century there was plenty of time and manpower, so applying lots of coats and waiting may not have been as costly as it is today. Roll forward to the Victorian age, and them scientists work out that oxygen makes oil set faster, so to get the polymerisation started you can blow air through, and a bit of heat kicks it off nicely - so boil it. Then use it up before it goes off Roll forward a bit more, and we start adding other stuff that makes it dry faster and harder. You can stop drinking it at this stage, in fact you'd better stop drinking it, or using it on food related products like chopping boards and salad bowls. Yes, you could eat off oiled salad tongs / bowl for years with no bad things happening, but, well, we've been making about a thousand 'new' chemical products a year since the fifties, and stuff like DDT was a good thing, and thalidomide, and we didn't know that Coca Cola would bring down a whole generation of kids and reduce them to heaps of overweight diabetics and so on. So swap to pure walnut oil or food grade linseed oil, and stop drinking the BLO. If you really want to make your own BLO, then first find some oil, then boil it. at a high temperature. for a long long time. Or wait longer if you use the raw stuff. When Scott said that raw LO doesn't dry, he also qualified it and said 'nearly' because he knows that it will dry, but maybe not in your lifetime, and especially so if you allow it to capillary its way into the interior of timber, where there is no oxygen to cause it to polymerise. That timber will weep for years to come every time the ambient conditions make it expand/contract / spring a leak. BLO, however, already has the reaction in progress, so will eventually get there. The story about dunking a new plane is probably true. If there are no heavy planes, because there are no iron planes, how're you to make a good heavy tool? add weight - fill it with oil. I love oil finishes. 20 or 30 coats produces the finish that predated french polish (shellac) - oil the product a few times over a couple of weeks, deliver it, and then wipe over with an oily cloth every week for a year, every month for ever. Well, these days maybe not. Maybe take the Scott G shortcut and apply as many coats as you have time for, then a mix with a harder, oil friendly varnish, or if you have enough coats, go back to the 17th century and apply wax. BLO and wax - a very forgiving finish that can be repaired easily. Richard Wilson Yorkshireman Galoot in Northumberland, where autumn just arrived. More about oils http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Zb84fVthd_cC&lpg=PA335&ots=bE4YH3sTZ M&dq=%22Rape%20seed%20oil%22%20%2B%20polymerise&pg=PA335#v=onepage&q&f=false">ht tp://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Zb84fVthd_cC&lpg=PA335&ots=bE4YH3sTZM&dq=%22Rap e%20seed%20oil%22%20%2B%20polymerise&pg=PA335#v=onepage&q&f=false On 16 Oct 2014, at 08:09, Malcolm Thomas wrote: > Oh, just so that I am 100% clear here - when you all refer to BLO, you are referring to the over-the-counter bottled BLO you buy in the hardware store ?? or, are you guys actually boiling your own linseed oil - because we simply like the old ways :-) ??? > > Sorry for the GIT-ish type question.. > > Cheers > Mal > |
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251119 | Michael Blair <branson2@s...> | 2014‑10‑16 | Re: Dating a cooper's tool -- help! |
I've run into a dating problem for a cooper's tool -- the chamfer knife. Seen as one of the definitive cooper's tools, I have to determine if it was in common use before 1846, and I suspect it was not. In fact, it makes no appearance among cooper's tools other than British and American. The tool in question can be seen in the first two rows of photos here: http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=cooper%27s+chamfer+knife&qpvt=coope r%27s+chamfer+knife&FORM=IGRE#a">http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=cooper%27s+ chamfer+knife&qpvt=cooper%27s+chamfer+knife&FORM=IGRE#a The second photo in the top row (left handed, you'll notice) is, I believe, not a chamfer knife, but a "flincher" in English parlance, a tool found in collections of Italian cooper's tools and also in use by Dutch coopers, who use it to, in fact, chamfer the stave ends on herring barrels. The chamfer knife is a massive thing, weighing three pounds and more. While not having the distinctive handling -- one handle at 90 degrees to the blade, and the other handle parallel to the blade -- the mass of the tool sold by Horst auctions (number 88) could be a forerunner of the chamfer knife: http://www.horstauction.com/ tool13octlist It is used for cutting the chime on barrel staves by British and American coopers, instead of the cooper's adzes used by French, Spanish, and German coopers. Sutter's Fort has three of these in the cooper's shop. All show the D.R. Barton mark in the post 1870 oval. If these were not available in 1846, they need to go to the State Museums collections for the appropriate time period. So far, they don't show up in Timmins (Tools for the Trades and Crafts, Kenneth Roberts edition) or in Smith's Key to Sheffield's Manufacturies. (Jiggers or Jigging Knives show up, but definitely not the same tool at all.) Mike in Sacto |
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251123 | Brian Welch <brian.w.welch@g...> | 2014‑10‑16 | Re: Dating a cooper's tool -- help! |
On Thu, Oct 16, 2014 at 1:11 PM, Michael Blair wrote: > I've run into a dating problem for a cooper's tool -- the chamfer knife. > Seen as one of the definitive cooper's tools, I have to determine if it > was in common use before 1846, and I suspect it was not. In fact, it > makes no appearance among cooper's tools other than British and American. > > The tool in question can be seen in the first two rows of photos here: > > http://www.b ing.com/images/search?q=cooper%27s+chamfer+ > knife&qpvt=cooper%27s+chamfer+knife&FORM=IGRE#a Is number 7 on the Boisselier plate from Diderot (1750s) a chamfer knife? http://artflsrv02.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/philologic/getobject.pl?c.18:22: 1.encyclopedie0513">http://artflsrv02.uchicago.edu/cgi- bin/philologic/getobject.pl?c.18:22:1.encyclopedie0513 Brian |
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251131 | Michael Blair <branson2@s...> | 2014‑10‑16 | Re: Dating a cooper's tool -- help! |
Kinda yes, Brian. No.7 *is* meant to be used with the parallel end inside a raised barrel, and this pattern is essentially the same as the Dutch tool used to cut the chime on herring barrels. I have seen one American example, blacksmith made in the 1850s, as well as a Dutch example, and two that appear on photographs of Italian cooper's benches. The Dutch use the same name for this and a cooper's drawknife -- kufferziemesser. But it is not the "chamfer knife" that I need to date. The one that concerns me is a very heavy tool. The L&IJ White 1905 catalog offers this sort for "hogsheads" or "the Cleveland pattern White's Improved Extra Heavy Double Steel for oil, pork, and whisky barrel work." The weight range on these starts at 6 pounds and ranges up to 12 pounds. Definitely a different critter. Mike in Sacto > Is number 7 on the Boisselier plate from Diderot (1750s) a chamfer > knife? > http://artflsrv02.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/philologic/getobject.pl?c.18:2 2:1.encyclopedie0513">http://artflsrv02.uchicago.edu/cgi- bin/philologic/getobject.pl?c.18:22:1.encyclopedie0513 > [2] > > Brian |
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251747 | "annewatson" <annewatson9775@o...> | 2014‑11‑21 | Re: Soaking wood in linseed oil |
Wow, more than I ever needed to know BUT just what I wanted to know. Among my leftovers I found an unopened 5 gallon container of boiled linseed oil, and my project for this week is to make some open shelves under my outdoor work bench. I intend to make them as slats so the water can drain through. will give the LO a try. -----Original Message----- From: Yorkshireman Sent: Thursday, October 16, 2014 7:44 AM Cc: oldtools porch Subject: Re: [OldTools] Soaking wood in linseed oil Boiled Linseed Oil is a popular topic on this list. Its something we all swear by and at. |
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251774 | Gye Greene <gyegreene@g...> | 2014‑11‑22 | Re: Soaking wood in linseed oil |
> day 9: the cats knocked over the jar and made a mess > "I [heart] empiricism" "I [indifferent] cats" > What am I doing wrong? Should I completely immerse the wood? Or should > some end grain be exposed to air? Some rather floppy data-points: About a year ago I did a month-by-month rotation of all of my wooden mallets (the heads, anyhow): cut the top off of a plastic milk jug; mostly-filled with (borg, has driers) BLO; place a note to idicate the changeover date; repeat for each mallet. Hoped for increased resillaince and weight, but didn't formally test. Mostly did it for the voodoo. Certainly didn't seem to **hurt** anything -- and I enjoyed the ritual. (Had to hang them for a week or so, to "dry", before putting them away.) Over the years, have never noticed fungus due to BLO. **Have** noticed mildew (does mildrew penetrate?), on some previously-BLO'd handles, which I simply wiped off. Didn't seem to damage the structure of the wooden handle. Have not noticed mildrew in the last few years -- maybe due to using my tools more, or storing in racks rather than in toolboxes? Dunno. Great thread, BTW. Saving to HD. :) --Travis (Brisbane, AU) |
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