Stephen M wrote:
Unless I am mistaken you misunderstood his point. He is saying that he
has
never seen a specific example of a 'tung oil' that did not contain 'tung


Perhaps you are correct.

I've read it three times and I'm still not sure. I though he was trying to
say that "all tung oils are really some type of blend"

Then I should clarify.

I've never seen a product labeled 'tung oil' that was anything but
_tung oil_.

Any product I have ever seen that was tung oil plus something else
was labeled 'tung oil foo', for various values of 'foo' and NOT just
'tung oil'.


That said, what I took away from the Flexner text, was that just because the
can says "tung oil" does not mean that that it has a meaningful amount of
tung oil. In a practical sense, there are products out there with tung oil
in their name that, for all intents and purposes, have no tung oil at all.

Yes, that is what he says and I say that's a myth. Had he not omitted
'foo', then the statement might have been true. As it stands, his
statement is like observing that 'Cranberry Juice Cocktail' might
have very little cranberry juice in it and then writing that
'Cranberries'
don't necessarily have any cranberry in them at all.

That is one of my criticisms of his book. The 'myths' he debunks
are sometimes exagerations or misinterpretations of true statements,
and I'm not clear that anyone other than the author ever made those
exagerations or misinterpretations. E.g. he debunks a couple
of straw men.

However, the bulk of his text is a very practical and informative
guide to wood finishing. I'm happy to recomend it.


Unless it says "pure tung oil", the label tells you very little about what's
in the can. I would be nice if finishe shad FDA-style labeling, (e.g., HI-C
really does have 10% real fruit juice, which, IMO is pretty insignificant).


My experience in reading labels tells me that if it says 'tung oil'
it is pure tung oil. If it says 'tung oil foo' then it is not pure
tung
oil anymore than latex paint is pure latex.

--

FF