boiled linseed oil

Bladite

Bladite

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does wood good. it turns light colored wood into the most glowing kaya yellow with warmth and wonderful texture after the fact. causes wood to shed water like crazy. makes the fibers round out and swell too, which is one of the reasons why i'm guessing that the surface texture smooths nicely... but it makes axe and hammer heads stick like mad too.

course, when you rub some onto/into the wood, you're supposed to wait say 10-15 minutes, and wipe off the residue. thing is, when you come back, and the wood is completely dry, no residue, and whoa. talk about dry and thirsty. more! more! more!

plus it makes good with the axe heads and the sticking.

some folx i hear, mix it with tung oil or even danish oil, or alternate treatments. the BLO appears to be what gransfors bruks uses on their handles. nice stuff.

bladite
 
Ah, the smell of boiling oil on the ramparts, those were the days! a little used army speciality nowadays, not many oil-boilers in modern armies....so they have to make do:
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I have Tru-Oil, Danish Watco, and boiled linseed oil (BLO) on the shelf, and have to say I love the smell of the BLO. It makes the shop smell like a real woodworker's shop. I think of it as an air freshener; got a big box of rags soaked in the stuff out there right now.


Mike ;)
 
Ad Astra said:
I have Tru-Oil, Danish Watco, and boiled linseed oil (BLO) on the shelf, and have to say I love the smell of the BLO. It makes the shop smell like a real woodworker's shop. I think of it as an air freshener; got a big box of rags soaked in the stuff out there right now.


Mike ;)
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Mike, that is a serious firehazard. As the oils dry they release heat, and a balled up rag of oil is a big nono. They will conbust. Lay them out in the driveway and let them dry. Totaly soak them in water. Dispose of them in a metal trashcan dedicated to rags. Any of those is good, but please don't save them in a box all bunched together bro.

Danish oil is mostly BLO from what I understand.
 
Tung oil seems to resist water better than linseed oil; I use it on all my wooden-handled knives, as well as ax handles.
 
Correct me if I'm wrong, and excuse my being a stickler about semantics, but I don't think you would want to be around boiling oil. That would be extremely dangerous. "The boiling point of a substance is the temperature at which it can change its state from a liquid to a gas throughout the bulk of the liquid at a given pressure...." Water does this quite safely, since steam is not flamable. What most people probably mean when they say "boiling oil" would probably be more accurately referred to as "hot oil". That's what McDonalds uses to deep-fry french fries.;):D

James
 
So how does one go about boiling linseed oil?

I have a mental image of putting an open jar of oil directly onto a hot stove. Or perhaps one should put the jar of oil inside a half filled pot of water, and then put it on the stove.
 
Jef? I don't think that anyone here is actually boiling raw linseed oil. They're simply referring to the "boiled" variant that's commercially available, which (so I'm told) isn't even boiled anymore.

(If someone is actually boiling linseed oil here, I hope to hell that you're doing it outside and dressing appropriately.)

I concur with Aproy. We had a midnight kitchen fire at work two weeks ago; the culprit was tightly compacted rags that were soaked with beef fat and cooking oil in a closed can spontaneously combusting. It actually can happen.

For all the crap that we heard about rags catching fire in the navy, I had to go to a prison to actually see it happen. Sad. :o
 
y'all are freakin hilarious! :eek: :D :p



IMHO, Boiled Linseed Oil is best on lighter-colored, dull-toned woods. Really brings them out. As does Tung Oil. Or Danish Oil. Or a mixture of any of the above.

I like it less on darker colored woods...because you can see the amber color "on top" of the wood.
 
I remember when I was a kid, our basement smelled like smoke, we tracked it down to the laundry room garbage can, and some boiled lindseed oil soaked rags my dad had tossed in there. Spontanious combustion was new to me at the time kind of a strange concept. It's nice when something like that is a science lesson and not a disaster.
 
Andy, thanks for pointing out my goof. I have actually tested for spontaneous combustion, having read the many warnings, by putting the rags in my BBQ grill. Can't get it to happen, but I believe it.

I do refill my car's little air freshener bottle with Ballistol, though. Makes the vehicle smell all khukuri-like.


Mike :p
 
Josh Feltman said:
Goes great on a salad with a bit of balsamic vinegar as well.
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Boiled Linsead oil isnt boiled anymore, it has heavy metal driers like Cadmium, arsenic, beryllium, chromium, and nickel added to speed Drying.

If ingested you might as well take up russan rulete with used syringes found in a stairwell or alley as a hobby. ;)


Human consumption Linsead is sold as Flax oil.

Spiral
 
Er, yeah, I was kidding, Spiral.

Good point about spontaneous combustion as well. Latex gloves will do the same thing as they break down. The painting crew where I used to work caught one of the big portable storage units on fire that way.
 
:thumbup: Thats cool then Josh! :D

But I see people coating salad bowls & servers with it regularly, or eating sandwiches after handling it.

A Lot of people seem to think its innocuus!

cheers,
Spiral
 
The stuff's no good for you, and I think it can be absorbed through the skin as well, which is a real shame, as hand rubbing it into a handle seems to give the best results.
 
No, you don't "boil" linseed oil. It comes that way, out of the can, at the hardware store you will find boiled linseed oil and raw linseed oil. Boiled linseed oil will dry. Raw linseed oil will not, which is why it's used on park benches and ship railings. It stays sticky and weather resistant. Which is why your pants stick to park benches.

Years ago a friend who was into furniture refinishing told me how she boiled linseed oil on the kitchen range and how it stunk up the house.

And yeah, you leave those rags laying around...and they make great tack rags... and they will self-combust and burn. If you want to use them again the next day, just drape them open over a metal can, but do not ball them up unless you plan to store them outside.
 
Boiled linseed oil was the standard for gun stocks for many many years.
Jack OConnor write a how-to step by step as a matter of course for beginning shooters. It's neat people rediscover what Grandpa used. True oil (which uses linseed oil) and the fast dry alternatives sort of pushed unaltered boiled linseed oil out of the picture.


munk
 
spirlatwista said:
But I see people coating salad bowls & servers with it regularly, or eating sandwiches after handling it.

A Lot of people seem to think its innocuus!
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Actually, linseed oil is flax seed oil by another name. And flaxseed oil is good for you. It is one of the best there is from a health standpoint, what with all the gamma-3 fatty acid (alpha linoleic acid). I wouldn't want to consume the stuff you get at the hardware store, but don't be ashamed if you get a little on you.

Josh Feltman said:
The stuff's no good for you, and I think it can be absorbed through the skin as well, which is a real shame, as hand rubbing it into a handle seems to give the best results.
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Again, I am not sure about how the stuff you buy in the hardware store is processed, but unadulterated linseed oil is very good for you, and I doubt the variety you get at the hardware store would do any harm either -- I just wouldn't want to consume it.

James
 
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