First let me do my spelling/writting disclaimer. I'm a shitty speller, dyslexic and all sorts ofher stuff. basicaly a post this size is not easy unless i just do it and don't think to much...but i should get the main points across.. thanks
I've been wanting to start this post for a while. Oil is by far my favorite wood finish. I'm partial to drying oils. Oils basically fall into three lists non-drying, semi drying and drying. In the case of didjs, where we all seem to agree that the strong moisture barrier is important, a drying oil is the one. The provide the greatest and most durable/long term barrier.
The most basic standard for determining an oil is it's iodine number...hum..i'm not a chemist and don't fully understand the realationship but science guys have found that the amount of idione that can be absorbed into an oil gives you an quanitavtive understanding of it's drying capabilities. iodine number below 115 non drying, 115-130 semi and 130 or higher drying. There are some basic genral lists out there of oils, and their iodine numbers to provide a genralization of that type of oil. Thing of it is, like any thing that grows..which is where most oil we are talking about, come from, vary in there genitic make up and environmentaly conditions. So, some times you may find oils crossing over the lines from one catagory to another. Drying is sort of a tricky term here...it's old and come from simply observeing a wet thing turning not wet. Really what happens is that the oil reacts with oxygen. The reaction forms polyimure bounds. So basically an oil with a high iodine number a that is exposed to air turns into plastic. The longer the polymerbonds the stronger the plastic. Oil like wood "dries" in two stages. First the oils form strands or straight molecules then the molecules bound side to side or sort of cross stich. (I'm not sure but i think this is the differnce between semi dry and drying.) The longer the strands and the tighter the bound the more durable,flexible and wet resitant the plastic. Some classic drying oils are poppy seed, walnut, hemp, lineseed, soy, and tung. Tung oil is the generic "dryest" of the drying oils. On average it has the longest strands, and the tight cross stiching. Some people say best dyring oil..but that is realitive and depends on yer project. It also drys realitively fast on it's own. And thats a good segway to dryers and toxicity... cause tung oil is toxic , allthough, organic and natuaral. Like in the production of a lot of plastics once the reatction has taken place the chemistry is differnt and it is no longer toxic. With oil finishes, the folks that manufacture them add dryers to them to speed the drying or oxidization or polyimerzations....these dryers are nortuiorsly toxic throughout history.... lead, cadmium and now cobalt. and other metalic salts or soaps..ahh i'm not chemist so i get it confused...
Lineseed oil is a weird one. i've seen it rated as nondrying, semi and drying...see some times with dryer you can push an oil into another catogory..as well as simply speed up it's polimerzation. So some say linseed is not a drying oil or at least it drys reallly slow like years and years. Back in the day, and still today, allthough, it is a dying art, people used to boill or blow an oil to make a semi dry dry or a "slow drying" dry faster. (hum that's a odd sentence if it even is a sentnce) The boiling is simply that same thing we do with water...although the best results are obtaine with pressure cookers. certian oils have there magic heats and the pressure cooking enables you to not burn the oil but still get the reaction speeded. Burning like with food can ruin it's essence. This procedure the reason for lot's of horenduos accidents back in the day, whole citys where lots to gaint oil boiler explotions. Often this happend when solvents where add to the mix. See the reaction get speed and the oil get thinker the thiker oils is not good for penitartion and application, so solvent are add. Also simply don't want to end up with a gaint gummy bear thingy inside the cooker. So, this is why today you go to the store and buy bioled linseed oil and it's full of and types of nasty shit. petroleum solvents and metalic dryies. And that oil was never actaluy boiled. Blowing oils is another form of speeding the reaction where the oil is force through a type of jet or nozzle this mixes it with the air on a moleculare level. There are some companies that stick to the old ways. Blown oil is often sold as art painting product. "Tried and trure" is one of the more well known in this country wood finishing product companies doing it old school style.
Walnut and linseed come next in line to tung oil in the wood treatment oil finish world. BOth of these have the best potential for those that want to do it them selves from stractch on acount of the number of walnut trees in this country and the lack of tung trees...allthough there are some plantation of tung in the south..it is indiginus to china.(china wood tree) And flax well shit that was americas number on cash crop next to hemp for an long long time. Which is a great drying oil but the risk ain't woth a good wood finish in my mind. I'm growing a test plot of flax, my self, this year. Honestly there are probably a whole lot of oils out there being over looked. These oils i've list are popular because of mass industry and world trade, farming on large scale, not nessicarily because they are the best.
Aside from drying and solvents many good finishs use resiens. laquer is a genirc term for a finish that use a resien suspended in the oil. Lac was a break through in the finish world and spread like wild fire amoung furniture and instrument makers. Lac is a resien that comes from bugs..there are lots of types of lac bug each with their own properties. Shellca is an acholo base finish where laqure uses oil. Most modern products or reffrence to these terms like "boiled lineseed" is a bastardization. Copol, dragons blood, balsm fir are other historical popular resiens use in finishes. Wax's are often added to added for extra moisture resistance.
Let's not forget wood. If we are worried about moisture. Some woods are naturaly more resistant then others, cedar and redwood are poplar sidings in history cause they are very weather resistant. Cedar shingles.."right" never herd of alder shingles, have yeh. Locust is a classic fecne post wood in old america. locust fence post out lasted most other. Osage orange is and other clasic rot resistant wood. Fence post were often charged or burnt adding to their resistance. Tropical woods are popluar these days for decks. The genral rule is the more color the wood have the more resistant to root it is. Also let it be said that the genral rule is that the more color the wood has the more toxic the dust is. I once sanded some wenge with out a resporator and got laid out for a three days with flu like syptoms.
All in all my theory is a good penitrating coat. This is a coat of solvent or "thinned" thined oil. I've dream at times of building a tube in which i could put a didj submerged in good oil under high pressure to force the oild deep into the wood."presure treating" Let the penitrating oil dry partialy or all the way...??? not sure wich would be best, then some thinned oil/resien coats. Followed up by a wax coat. An other idea is to penitrate the wood with a semi or non drying oil. Alot of furniture maker take months and motnth to finish with oils. slowly building up coats til the oil is obove the surface of the wood.
A note on non toxicity... I found a recipe fromthe 1700's once that call for garlic as a dryer. not sure if it's garlic oil powder or what but, ther are surely natural no toxic dryiers out there, it's just finding them. MAny wood workers that make bowls and spouns and such use food grade solvents, manufactured for making cakes and pastries and stuff like that...some wood working supplyers carry these solvents
That smy oil down load...
peace
I've been wanting to start this post for a while. Oil is by far my favorite wood finish. I'm partial to drying oils. Oils basically fall into three lists non-drying, semi drying and drying. In the case of didjs, where we all seem to agree that the strong moisture barrier is important, a drying oil is the one. The provide the greatest and most durable/long term barrier.
The most basic standard for determining an oil is it's iodine number...hum..i'm not a chemist and don't fully understand the realationship but science guys have found that the amount of idione that can be absorbed into an oil gives you an quanitavtive understanding of it's drying capabilities. iodine number below 115 non drying, 115-130 semi and 130 or higher drying. There are some basic genral lists out there of oils, and their iodine numbers to provide a genralization of that type of oil. Thing of it is, like any thing that grows..which is where most oil we are talking about, come from, vary in there genitic make up and environmentaly conditions. So, some times you may find oils crossing over the lines from one catagory to another. Drying is sort of a tricky term here...it's old and come from simply observeing a wet thing turning not wet. Really what happens is that the oil reacts with oxygen. The reaction forms polyimure bounds. So basically an oil with a high iodine number a that is exposed to air turns into plastic. The longer the polymerbonds the stronger the plastic. Oil like wood "dries" in two stages. First the oils form strands or straight molecules then the molecules bound side to side or sort of cross stich. (I'm not sure but i think this is the differnce between semi dry and drying.) The longer the strands and the tighter the bound the more durable,flexible and wet resitant the plastic. Some classic drying oils are poppy seed, walnut, hemp, lineseed, soy, and tung. Tung oil is the generic "dryest" of the drying oils. On average it has the longest strands, and the tight cross stiching. Some people say best dyring oil..but that is realitive and depends on yer project. It also drys realitively fast on it's own. And thats a good segway to dryers and toxicity... cause tung oil is toxic , allthough, organic and natuaral. Like in the production of a lot of plastics once the reatction has taken place the chemistry is differnt and it is no longer toxic. With oil finishes, the folks that manufacture them add dryers to them to speed the drying or oxidization or polyimerzations....these dryers are nortuiorsly toxic throughout history.... lead, cadmium and now cobalt. and other metalic salts or soaps..ahh i'm not chemist so i get it confused...
Lineseed oil is a weird one. i've seen it rated as nondrying, semi and drying...see some times with dryer you can push an oil into another catogory..as well as simply speed up it's polimerzation. So some say linseed is not a drying oil or at least it drys reallly slow like years and years. Back in the day, and still today, allthough, it is a dying art, people used to boill or blow an oil to make a semi dry dry or a "slow drying" dry faster. (hum that's a odd sentence if it even is a sentnce) The boiling is simply that same thing we do with water...although the best results are obtaine with pressure cookers. certian oils have there magic heats and the pressure cooking enables you to not burn the oil but still get the reaction speeded. Burning like with food can ruin it's essence. This procedure the reason for lot's of horenduos accidents back in the day, whole citys where lots to gaint oil boiler explotions. Often this happend when solvents where add to the mix. See the reaction get speed and the oil get thinker the thiker oils is not good for penitartion and application, so solvent are add. Also simply don't want to end up with a gaint gummy bear thingy inside the cooker. So, this is why today you go to the store and buy bioled linseed oil and it's full of and types of nasty shit. petroleum solvents and metalic dryies. And that oil was never actaluy boiled. Blowing oils is another form of speeding the reaction where the oil is force through a type of jet or nozzle this mixes it with the air on a moleculare level. There are some companies that stick to the old ways. Blown oil is often sold as art painting product. "Tried and trure" is one of the more well known in this country wood finishing product companies doing it old school style.
Walnut and linseed come next in line to tung oil in the wood treatment oil finish world. BOth of these have the best potential for those that want to do it them selves from stractch on acount of the number of walnut trees in this country and the lack of tung trees...allthough there are some plantation of tung in the south..it is indiginus to china.(china wood tree) And flax well shit that was americas number on cash crop next to hemp for an long long time. Which is a great drying oil but the risk ain't woth a good wood finish in my mind. I'm growing a test plot of flax, my self, this year. Honestly there are probably a whole lot of oils out there being over looked. These oils i've list are popular because of mass industry and world trade, farming on large scale, not nessicarily because they are the best.
Aside from drying and solvents many good finishs use resiens. laquer is a genirc term for a finish that use a resien suspended in the oil. Lac was a break through in the finish world and spread like wild fire amoung furniture and instrument makers. Lac is a resien that comes from bugs..there are lots of types of lac bug each with their own properties. Shellca is an acholo base finish where laqure uses oil. Most modern products or reffrence to these terms like "boiled lineseed" is a bastardization. Copol, dragons blood, balsm fir are other historical popular resiens use in finishes. Wax's are often added to added for extra moisture resistance.
Let's not forget wood. If we are worried about moisture. Some woods are naturaly more resistant then others, cedar and redwood are poplar sidings in history cause they are very weather resistant. Cedar shingles.."right" never herd of alder shingles, have yeh. Locust is a classic fecne post wood in old america. locust fence post out lasted most other. Osage orange is and other clasic rot resistant wood. Fence post were often charged or burnt adding to their resistance. Tropical woods are popluar these days for decks. The genral rule is the more color the wood have the more resistant to root it is. Also let it be said that the genral rule is that the more color the wood has the more toxic the dust is. I once sanded some wenge with out a resporator and got laid out for a three days with flu like syptoms.
All in all my theory is a good penitrating coat. This is a coat of solvent or "thinned" thined oil. I've dream at times of building a tube in which i could put a didj submerged in good oil under high pressure to force the oild deep into the wood."presure treating" Let the penitrating oil dry partialy or all the way...??? not sure wich would be best, then some thinned oil/resien coats. Followed up by a wax coat. An other idea is to penitrate the wood with a semi or non drying oil. Alot of furniture maker take months and motnth to finish with oils. slowly building up coats til the oil is obove the surface of the wood.
A note on non toxicity... I found a recipe fromthe 1700's once that call for garlic as a dryer. not sure if it's garlic oil powder or what but, ther are surely natural no toxic dryiers out there, it's just finding them. MAny wood workers that make bowls and spouns and such use food grade solvents, manufactured for making cakes and pastries and stuff like that...some wood working supplyers carry these solvents
That smy oil down load...
peace
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Washington
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