Official Luthiers Forum!

walnut oil is mentioned but then question of purity.
I have toung and linseed.

What works

Bob

I have some artist quality walnut oil, Martha Graham. I can't imagine anything bad in it. I haven't done any French polish yet though. I don't think impurities would be a problem.

I have some ruby red 30 plus year old linseed oil too. I think I put madder root in it when it wasn't working in some other experiment, and it soaked in for years. I was working 55-57 hours a week on off shifts, and whole decades are a blur! Going from nights to days on the weekends is not so good.

Naturally I didn't write anything down. Just spur of the moment decisions.

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Why be normal?

I was taught to use extra virgin olive oil and have had no issues with it. I use it sparingly and it gets worked out and spirited off as I finish each session.

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Craig

I am looking for a curing oil which I have on hand. l've used walnut oil on bowls but now read must use pure walnut oil. ??
I have listed oils on hand . Looking for experience with others. I even have almond oil poured off almond butter but consider it experimental.

Ideas!

Bob

An important question: What do you want the oil to do in your French polish process? Do you want it to lubricate only? Or do you want it to both lubricate and become part of the finish? The idea of using Walnut oil is that some of the oil will stay in the shellac and become part of the finish. I have not been successful with that, but that is probably my own fault. Others seems to make it work. For myself, if I use oil, I want it to go away and not stay as part of the finish. So, olive oil is what I use (again, if I use oil at all).

I have used mineral oil for 10 years;its the standard. I was looking to improve process. Perhaps I should drop it. Half of a redwood top had ahazsy look. Other parts looked great. Puzzled at mixed results.

Bob



















































I

If you want the oil to be part of the finish, try some of your walnut oil finish (that might have driers) on a test piece. Seal it first, and then add the oil into the mix, and put a few coats on.

It will work, or it won't. Maybe it will feel good when applying. Maybe you won't like it at all. What someone else said doesn't really matter. It might make a pretty tough surface. It might not even work. But on a test piece it doesn't matter.

The oil in the mix, and drying, seems like it would be both a lubricant, and a toughener. And you don't have to be sure that it all gets out, and doesn't stay wet under the surface. The more I think about it, the better a drier actually sounds!

I might have to try that myself. But I don't have any siccative.

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Why be normal?

Probably penetration depth of the initial coat. If you pour a puddle and push it around, it will soak in and give a deep wetted look. If you wipe it on with a relatively dry cloth, it will seal the surface without soaking in, giving a more flat look with less darkening, similar to bare wood. Additional coats won't change it, so it's easy to end up with a blotchy appearance if you start wiping with a wet cloth and don't reload until it dries out, by which time some areas will have been sealed with the flat look.

I've used walnut oil, which I got years ago at a health food store. For guitars I use it as a lubricant, but some does seem to get absorbed into the finish. On fiddles I put it right on the bare wood, and wipe back as much as possible. Then I do a FP pumice fill, starting with a spit coat of much thinned out resin (not always shellac). That tends to pull most of the oil out of the wood. Once the grain is sealed I go to a thin coat or two of clear varnish, and then to the color coats. The oil on the wood provides a nicer chatoyance than you usualy get with shellac, and some other resins can help with that as well. I've been using some terpene resin I made years ago based on the Fulton varnish recipe.

At any rate, I think the added drying oil does incorporate into the shellac finish coat when I French polish, and add to the toughness and solvent resistance. It's hard to do really well controlled tests on this stuff. I avoid oil on the tops of guitars in particular as is tends to add damping.