Thread: Cabots Danish Oil formula change?

Just as an aside: if you have a can of oil finish that's starting to gel, try this: strain it through a stocking and add a shot of White Spirits.

That will give you a bit more mileage but a thinner product.

Tip courtesy of Len Smith.

Originally Posted by rsser

Look forward to that Rob.

This was on flat surfaces? Burnished how?

WH, thanks for the heads-up.

Hi Ern,

Flat surfaces. A stick (150 x 1000mm) of highly figured Red Gum.

Burnishing was done as per: damnfinefurniture.
Tests were done after 48 hours drying.

This would equate to the process you used on the lathe I would think. One thing I find very useful for controlling the amount of oil left in the timber is the use of microfribre pads. (Festool Platin 2 but also available from Sandpaperman) I use these at 500g 1000g and the final 2000 and 4000g pads. The 500 and 1000 pads really soak up extra oil and provide a slurry free final sand and wipe down.
Give me a few days and I'll be able to post the BLO results v Wattyl Teak Oil results. I'll detail the method as well.

Regards,

Rob

Incidentally guys,

If you're after Pure Tung Oil at a sensible price, try your local Mitre 10. Mine (Danahers Mitre 10 in Banksia Street Heidelberg VIC), has 1 litre bottles of it for $20.00. Considering you'll probably use it cut with White Spirit (1:3) at least for your first few coats, that makes it damn cheap!

Regards,

Rob

Originally Posted by rsser

Just as an aside: if you have a can of oil finish that's starting to gel, try this: strain it through a stocking and add a shot of White Spirits.

That will give you a bit more mileage but a thinner product.

Tip courtesy of Len Smith.

Ern, I wish my cans of oil should last so long!

Regards,

Rob

Originally Posted by LGS

Hi WH,

The point is duly taken. Wattyl are not giving anything other than the hazardous components away. Some months back I did an evaluation of Liberon PureTung Oil. FW Danish Oil, Wattyl Teak Oil and Organoil HBO. Results were interesting a least. Resolution of grain was best with the Tung Oil and worst with Danish Oil. Any Poly in the mix (FW Danish Oil) caused some coagulation of the oil while it was being hard burnished, which didn't help the results. I have not tried BLO for hard burnishing, but will do so now. As it stands, the most likely extra (if there is one) in the Teak Oil is Tung Oil. It shall be interesting to see how BLO copes with the testing.
Tests included quality of finish, resistance to liquid (hot and cold), resistance to radiant heat (pot full of boiling water directly on to the surface) and ability to be cleaned with ordinary kitchen spray cleaners with no surface damage.
I'll let you know the results.

Regards,

Rob

Hi Rob

I've followed your previous threads on finishing and your advice on finishing with Organoil HBO has significantly improved my finish on a number of projects now. Looking forward to your latest round of testing.

cheers
WH

Hi all,
I'm sorry if I have hijacked this thread, but this follows on from issues relating to the hard burnishing of different oils which may or may not contain Tung Oil

Part 1 Several oils which should contain Tung Oil or say they do.
This is background to the experiment I will perform over the next few days using BLO, Wattyl Natural Teak Oil (Scandinavian) and Organoil HBO (The reference oil for this method)

In order to save space (and effort on my part) here is a link to a complete run down of the oils used and procedures followed.

The Great 5 Oil Burnish-off! - talkFestool

Regards,

Rob

So,
I performed the oiling as described above, with one exception. The oils were incubated with the timber for two incubations of 30 minutes each then sanded to 400 grit. Since performing the above evaluation, I have found this method to be satisfactory in producing the desired results.
The pics below detail the procedure as follows:

Pic 1 shows the three oils ready to go behind the highly figured Red Gum board. Three areas have been defined by two strips of masking tape labelled with each oils name and position. The board has been sanded using a Festool ETS150/3 at speed mark 6 with vacuum and using Festool Brilliant or Rubin pads; 80,100,120,150,180,240 and 400 grit.

Pic 2 show the oil applied to give a saturated appearance on each of the oils.

Left is BLO, straight from the bottle.
Centre is Wattyl Teak Oil, straight from the can.
Right is HBO straight from the can.

Pics 3-5 show the appearance of the oils (in the same order as above) after 30 minutes incubation

Pics 6-8 show the timber after the second incubation and sanding and a brisk rub down with a soft cotton cloth.

The sanding regime for wet sanding used the same ETS150/3 with no vacuum and using Festool pads 400, 500,800,1000,1200,1500,2000 and 4000 grit. The pads were either Brilliant (or similar) or Platin 2.

The final picture is to demonstrate the satin finish showing clear grain pattern. No loss of character.

So at the end of the actual oiling and hard burnishing, there is very little to separate the three oils. All give great apparent results. I will perform the functional tests on Saturday morning and post the results on Sat. afternoon. My gut feeling is that it won't matter which oil you use, you'll get a robust satin finish showing great grain differentiation.

Regards,

Rob

Today I performed several tests to evaluate BLO, Wattyl Teak Oil and Hard Burnishing Oil, to see if it is possible that the Wattyl product may contain BLO or Tung Oil, or only Tung Oil.
Results suggest that either Tung or BLO may be in the Wattyl product as all three behave in a similar manner.
The test performed were:
1. Pour cold water on the surface and allow to sit for 5 minutes
2. Pour near boiling water on the surface and allow to stand for 5 minutes.
3. Sit a pot of boiling water on top of the surface for 5 minutes
4. Use Spray and Wipe directly onto the surface and wipe off within 45 seconds.

After each test the surface was checked for fading, blistering, warping or any other changes to the pre test condition of the finish.

All three oils behaved exactly the same. No changes were observed after any change in conditions. Therefore I say that Tung Oil or Boiled Linseed Oil could be used to provide a resilient finish to timber.
Bear in mind that 48 hrs is probably a worst case scenario, as it would be more likely that people would give the oil up to 5 days to cure.
This shows the advantage of Hard Burnishing.
Figures 1- show the surfaces during and after testing. In all examples, BLO is to the left (first), Wattyl Oil is centre (second) and HBO is to the right (third)

Figs. 23-25 Appearance of the surfaces after 48 hrs, pre testing
Figs. 20-22 Cold water on each surface.
Figs. 17-19. Surface after CW.
Figs. 14-16. Hot water on each surface
Figs. 11-13 Post Hot water
Figs. 10. Radiant heat (pot) on BLO surface.(The two others were treated the same)
Figs. 7-9. Surface post HW
Figs. 4-6 Spray and Wipe on each surface.
Figs. 1-3. Post Spray and Wipe.

One more thing to do. That is to see how the surfaces look after a week and see if there are any changes to the surface which may exclude an oil from the experiment.

Regards,

Rob (Phew!)

Appreciate the testing you've done.

What BLO brand and what contents can you say?

Hi Ern,
It's always interesting to see how different oils react to the hard burnishing process. I'm glad to have helped clarify a situation.

The Oil I used is "Sceneys" Boiled Linseed Oil. It's been on my shelf for about 4 years. As far as I can tell, its pure BLO. I have another bottle which contains dryers, but there's nothing on this bottle to indicate additives. Perhaps we should look up the MSDS.

You can find the MSDS here. There are metals in the oil to aid drying, but this is the same for all BLO's.

I used the oil straight from the bottle and it was quite viscous. But unlike other oils (Pure Tung Oil eg) it didn't impact on the movement of the sander during the process. I would think you could dilute it down maybe 1:3 with White Spirit, but I don't see a real advantage...unless you want to save money. If anyone decides that they want to do this, Test it first!! It's not something I would do.
A note as well, you get no smell of linseed after the sanding and curing is done.

I'll post some pics of the week old cured samples um..next week!

Regards,

Rob

Rob, just a query.

You raised the matter of hardening time ....

With some products that polymerise and harden, wouldn't weeks rather than hours be a better test of water resistance?

Appreciate that his would add a considerable overhead to your work.

Hi Ern,

Not really an issue. The advantage of hard burnishing is that you allow the oil to soak into the timber, then when you start wet sanding, you generate heat, which causes polymerization of the oil in the wood. So you expect that about two -five days should be all you need to test the finish. If the finish hadn't taken after 48 hours, I would have expected to see damage or discolouration when it was wet and definitely when attacked with the Spray and Wipe. The result after say 3 weeks should only be better.
However, since I have the board still sitting around, it's no big deal to test again at three weeks.
In the interim, I'll post pics of the board as time goes by up until the next round of testing.

Regards,

Rob

Thanks Rob.

I'd understood polymerisation (cross-linking) to take time but you're saying heat speeds it up.

And I took hard burnishing to be the same as wet sanding (a relic of my time with Organoil HBO).

Originally Posted by rsser

Thanks Rob.

I'd understood polymerisation (cross-linking) to take time but you're saying heat speeds it up.

And I took hard burnishing to be the same as wet sanding (a relic of my time with Organoil HBO).

Rough rule of thumb is every 10°C increase in temperature doubles any reaction rate. So 20°C increase in temp is 4 times the reaction and so on.