"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
news
BTW Larry - thanks for the reply.
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-Mike-






On Tue, 25 Jan 2005 10:02:49 -0500, the inscrutable "Mike Marlow"
spake:

Not being tremendously experience or expert in the application of oils to
wood myself, I find myself in need of some advice.

Hey, and you even spelled "advice" correctly. Two points from the
get-go, Mike.


I've done some google
searches and think I know the direction we need to go, but I'd like to
run
my thoughts by some of the guys that regularly use oil finishes.

My son made a grip for his bow out of a chunk of walnut that I gave him
and
applied about six coats of Tung Oil to it. I'm sure this is not pure
Tung
Oil, but rather something from the local hardware store bearing that
label.
I know he didn't have enough time to do this properly (based on what
google
reveals), since he did the entire project in one night. From what I see,
6
coats should probably have taken about that many days to apply properly.

A coat a day is what I try to do, especially for the 3rd coat on up.
Did he use plain tung oil or boiled/catalyzed tung oil? If all in one
night, it will probably never dry. I'd suggest cleaning the dregs off
and letting it dry for a week. Then start over with a known product,
applying no more than one coat per day to allow it to DRY properly.


Anyway, he's at this point where he now has some amount of Tung Oil on
the
walnut and some areas are showing a nice gloss, or sheen better than
others.
Maybe because of uneven penetration/absorption of the Tung Oil, or maybe
because of the character of the wood. He'd like to even out the luster
across the entire piece. Also, I have to ask if he should be mixing up
his
Tung Oil with a varnish and possibly some Turpentine and applying a coupl
e
of coats that way in order to achieve more of a protective coat. This is
a
grip for a bow and it will be subject to body oils, to weather, etc.

Yes, a bit of varnish/turps wouldn't hurt and would help build more
quickly. Better yet, have him pick up some Waterlox.


--

People will occasionally stumble over the truth, but
most of the time they'll pick themselves up and carry on.
--anon