Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Gunsmithing Boiled Linseed Oil

Not sure where you got your information, but you have been seriously misled.

The chemicals added were driers to start the curing process. Sometimes fungicides were/are added to control fungus, but mildew is not an issue with sealed oils. And BLO does not evaporate at room temperature...

270 degrees would create a lot of problems in wood stocks... again, really curious where this "information" comes from.

I already addressed the waterproofing and shine issues...

If not being used for food service or baby rattles a little lead is not a bad thing! Viagra is said to put lead in pencils; wonder how it would work in oil???

You are correct, tung oil finishes are never pure tung oil... and many contain NO tung oil at all. They are simply called tung oil finishes because they are applied like a tung oil finish and they look like tung oil... which is to say they look like linseed oil finishes.

It is easily proven tung oil is not waterproof and not any more or less waterproof than linseed.

Tung oil is not poisonous and fungus and molds can and do grow in oil sometimes... mildew is not an oil problem...

Back in the 70's and early 80's I had a guy on my crew who was an "old" WWII vet whose job in the Army was artificer. (An artificer was a battalion-level ordnance guy who traveled with a mobile repair shop- in a deuce-and-a-half or trailer- whose job it was to repair small arms in the field, often under enemy fire.) He told me he took his training at some facility in Massachusetts, and part of the curriculum was to spend time at Springfield Armory. I picked his brain incessantly as a young guy with a keen interest in that stuff naturally would. I remember him describing the stock department at Springfield and the big vats of heated oil they submerged fresh stocks in to the tune of hundreds at a time. He said he asked if there was a special blend of oil and was told they used whatever the procurement people could get their hands on. He (Barney Barnhill) said he had jugs of BLO in his "kit" with which he would slather M1, Thompson, Springfield stocks after doing a repair (re-barreling, parts replacement, broken stocks, etc.) and before sending the gun back to the supply people or, in rare incidences, back to the original "owner". (His unit shipped over to the UK in '43 armed with Springfields and were re-issued with M-1's before heading into Normandy.)

Interesting