Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Gunsmithing Question for the wood workers...

Rather interesting experience here gents involving tru-oil AND boiled linseed oil.

Im refinishing a rifle stock of mine and decided to use Tru-Oil. Ive done several in the past so I'm not a total rookie...but this last effort i tried something different. After stripping and burnishing etc i applied Tru-Oil as normal. I used about 12 coats, all hand rubbed in and very very thin. The first three or so soaked in and the rest built up the standard high gloss finish. Here is where it gets interesting...after letting the last tru-oil coat dry for 72 hrs i knocked down the shine with a fine scotch bright. I blew it off with a compressor and tack cloth...and then applied boiled linseed oil...rubbed in again by hand. The idea is that i like applying BLO as a maintaining finish as it looks great and isn't as messy and has an easer cleanup than tru-oil. The results are pretty darn good if i do say so myself.

The question is this...will BLO bond sufficiently to Tru-Oil? It seems to be drying ok...but its slow as you all know. The brand I'm using is Klean Strip which is linseed oil and metallic driers.

Sure, Tru Oil is something like half drying oil, linseed or tung.

Well, since most Linseed oils aren't actually true Linseed or plant based, but an oil based finish with polymers to mimic linseed oil it all depends on how well the Truoil polymers and additives are compatible with the Klean Strip additives. You will need at least 30 days for both of them to cure completely to tell how well they are working out. After that, a bit of rubbing out with rotten stone or the like will probably be sufficient to give a nice finish, IMO....

I finished a Kimber 82G with a different method, Tru-Oil and Armor All.. I can not believe the finish. Rock hard and a nice gloss finish. Amour All first and then Tru oil. Only have to wait perhaps 20 minutes between coats, less as you build up. Do a Google search. I was skeptical, but.. Dang did it turn out nice. Better than straight Tru oil or Linseed oil finishes.

The biggest problem with the Armor oil finish is that it has silicone in it and will contaminate the wood and eventually cause the finish to fail....

Was wondering about that, about 6 months now and no issues. They claim the amour all causes some sort of a chemical reaction and makes the Tru Oil harden better. Will see as time passes.

Been reading up on few stock maker books, and a common finish schedule was to use some sort of varnish to seal and fill the grain, then finish with several coats of BLO rubbed in.

Armor-all as in a car detailing product? Never heard of that and not sure that I would want to use a silicone based product on wood. I build custom furniture as a side gig and use a lot of different finishes. Always tell the customers not to use silicone products on the furniture I build. Now back in the old Army days when we waxed and buffed the floors, a trick was to use armor-all with the last buffing pass to produce a higher, longer lasting shine, but that was on linoleum floors.

No idea where that comes from, but it is not factual. Linseed oil is too cheap to need a substitute.

Need to get the details straight first... BLO is simply very low-grade linseed and/or tung oil with a bunch of driers and drying inhibitors. It has no place in stock finishing, period.

What the way-back old timers used was linseed oil which had been boiled so it would cure. Then Japan drier, a heavy-metal catalyst, was discovered and it was added to linseed oil and rubbed in carefully. Fresh oil is far more reliable and as it ages it starts to thicken and gel requiring more pressure and effort to use. Japan drier is no longer a heavy metal compound catalyst.

Really?

By all reports starting with the MSDS and researching forward. Trade secret stuff but it acts like spar varnish mixed with drying oil and Japan dryers though some would say poly varnish. A mixture that had been around before Newell wrote his book. BTW, all BLO is low grade linseed? Where does the high grade stuff go, cheap barn paint? Depends on where you get it. Speaking of Newell he was no fan of paint store linseed. Writes you don't know how long it's been on the shelf. Wrote the stuff begins to degrade after 6 months IIRC.

The high grade stuff goes to art supply houses and, I suspect, the manufacturers of better quality varnishes. Reserve the dusty cans of BLO at the hardware store for mixing into your house paint.

I've always regarded Truoil to be nothing more nor less than a very thin wiping varnish- lots more oil and fewer solids than regular varnish. I kind of chuckle when I hear guys talk about laboriously applying a bazillion coats of Truoil to get a built-up surface barrier. Simply using spar varnish would've achieved the same result faster with the added benefit of more durability, UV protection, and enhanced waterproofing (although no finish is truly waterproof). Said finish can be manipulated (ie: rubbed out) at the end to mimic the look of the vaunted Truoil "oil finish" while producing infinitely better protection of the wood.

Truoil is the darling of the gun world not because of its superior properties but rather because of the marketing genius of Birchwood-Casey. Every gun shop in the land has a pegboard display of B-C products to include little bottles of Truoil. The idea of "hey, there's so much of it everywhere that it must be ok" also applies to we gun loonies. Not that it's bad stuff, just that there's better things out there.

In fact that was Newell's recommendation for a faux hand rubbed oil finish. Spar varnish to get everything level and a couple coats of oil for looks.

Truoil is easy. Have used it to restore truck guns and it's great for that.

Back to the OP. The oil should cure fine but it will be softer than the Tru-Oil. I have had oil over varnish scratch easily even after two years of curing. In that case it was a Slacum mix with wax in so that it has better rubbing properties, but the same can happen with BLO.

If you don't want to wait this long to find out how hard it gets I would recommend mixing some Tru-Oil with linseed to harden it slightly. Shellac is good too and aids in adhering to anything. Use Linseed oil from the health food section of the grocery store, it is refrigerated or get the art store type. Also use turpentine as a thinner instead of mineral spirits. The turps will polymerize with the oils the mineral oil just evaporates and makes the finish more porous.

RE: Armor All one of the main ingredients other than silicon is a polymerizer and plasticizer. I tried it once and am waiting to see how it ages. The only visual difference I could tell is a slight cloudiness. Finish feels hard and is fine after three years.

I forgot to mention that with the food grade oil I add both Japan and Cobalt drier to it. It has all the fats and waxes in it and is the slowest of all to dry. This is an advantage for the initial coats as it has more time to soak in but a disadvantage for the final coats. Another product I am liking is Stand Oil from the art section. This is linseed oil that has had oxygen bubble through which initiates the polymerization process. I add enough turps for rubbing consistency and this type oil dries faster and harder than plain oil.

You want boiled linseed oil, not raw linseed oil which doesn't "dry." Art store, not food store.

It came from a poster on rimfire central who was an executive at a very large paint company that coincidentally made Klean Strip and other oils. George was probably the most expert paint and oil analyst I've ever talked to and he knew all the formulations of all of these so called "oils" on the market. If he said it didn't contain any plant based material, you could take it to the bank. Linseed oil is cheap, but has a relatively short shelf life and also supply chain, IMO...

Bob

Update...it’s now been a couple more days. Added another extremely thin rubbed in BLO...stock is dry and looks fantastic. Seems BLO is fine appearance enhancing top or annual maintenance coat for tru-oil

Exactly right. If you look at the Tru- Oil MSDS( https://birchwoodcasey.com/files/datasheets/23123%252c-23035%252c-23132-Tru-Oil-Saftey-Data-Sheet.pdf) it is fairly easy to see, despite the "technical language", that it is basically an ordinary alkyd( oil based) varnish with about 10% linseed oil added to make it easier to hand rub. Oil-varnish mixtures have been used by wood finishers for at least 100 years. They are easy to apply, and look good, but the oil does nothing for the long term durability. Personally, I have come to rely on Minwax Wipe-on Poly. It dries fast, hard, and does not turn dark with age. It is only 36% solids, so for a pore filling finish, it takes several coats. However, I use the sanded-in system and pore filing happens quickly. Plus, once fully cured, it is very resistant to strong solvents like acetone and MEK.

RAN

+1

Anything you buy marked "BLO" is sold in hardware stores and made of junk oils.

Linseed oil is great oil for finishing, but it is also edible and all the high grade stuff is used either for food, or pharmaceuticals, or other very demanding uses. Tung, for all practical purposes is identical, however many are allergic to the stuff and so it has no use in food and such, therefore the higher grades are available as finish.