Bye bye BLO....
 

After years of using BLO for all my sealing needs.. I'm finaly convinced I've found something better that isnt a hassel to use and wont stink out my cellar...or add weight to my plugs.

My experiment is complete( except for the final seaon long field test), after leaving a sealed maple and a sealed birch blank in a bucket of water for 3 days, neither of them sank or split,.. unlike the unsealed ones, the maple sank in 3 hours.. it took about twice that to sink the birch...

I've switched to pure tung oil, I've tried it with turps and straight out of out of the can, with out alot of difference in the drying process...over night and they are bone dry... after cutting the sealed blanks ( both with and with out turps) to check the penetration, I am going with the pure tung oil, undiluted, I saw no appreciable difference in the penetration , but what appeared to be less "product" in the diluted one when i cut the plug in half....

besides the drying time, which I realy dont care about, my goal was to find something to maybe harden the softer woods, like the WRC that I make the majority of my plugs out of, it does seem that the natural resins in the tung oil did harden the wood somewhat.. the extent wont be known until I fish them a season.. I do know that I got quicker and more penetration on the hard woods than I did on the soft woods, 30 minutes seems to be the maximum time needed to get the best penetration, ones left overnight didnt seem to soak up anymore than the ones left for 30 minutes,, and unlike BLO, the hardwoods blanks did not sink( when left overnight) in the Tung oil as they did in the BLO, also, they did not gain any aprecieable weight, telling me that the product did dry completly internaly, something that BLO, at times never seems to do..The true test will be this summer when i fish them, but for now I'm going to "run" with it for the remainder of the building season.. I see ( or smell) one other benifit of the tung oil, plugs placed in a sealed contained after finishing dont give off that "chemical" smell like ones sealed in BLO... I've got plugs I made 3 years ago, in boxes that still give off an odor.. and that can not be good..


I'll have to report again in the fall on my final findings..

How much of a cost differential Joe?
But, your findings have got me to consider this change as well....

THANKS for sharing!!!

Joe how long were you soaking your plugs in the BLO for?? I find one minute (ayc) is more than sufficient! I do not have any odor afterwards.

Joe... When I did my testing on tung oil a couple years ago I found pretty much the same results, the harder the wood the better the penetration,,,,, I also found that I could get tung oil to literally penetrate ALL the way through a large dia. birch Darter... I learned some cool stuff during that testing phase,,,, I also enjoyed cutting the test blanks in half to see the results,,,,,

The tung oil I use is not pure but it seems to work pretty well and a gallon is fairly reasonable although the price has doubled in the last two years,,,,,,,

I do agree on the hard woods getting slightly harder with the tung oil,,, on WRC I found that my best results were achieved with a good penetrating epoxy applied directly to a heated blank,,,,,also the tighter the grain on the WRC the better results I had....

Good luck on your new sealer and I cant wait to hear about your findings,,,,

If cure (dry time) is not a problem stay with a proven method. I still think BLO/MS beats most.

I've been using a method employed by a down-east old salt wooden boat builder.

50/50 mix zinsser shellac and denat'd alcohol. I know there are some who don't like shellac for these applications, but if it worked on his wooden boats for years, its good enough for me (works perfect from my tests so far too)

15 minutes, I'm sure 1 minute is enough, cedar doesnt need much protection... we'll see.. I may go back.. you never know unless you try.. it is alot more expensive than BLO... but if it makes a better product... fine if not... I'll go back as BLO is a proven method...

I tested soaking times between 1 minute and 1 hour at different intervals and found no more penetration from 1 minute to 1 hour......I have never had any water intrusion, cracking, peeling or lifting paint! The true test for me came when I lost one of my plugs over Cuttyhunk....went back over 4 weeks later and Afterhours found the plug wrapped around a pot line in the water...for 4 weeks it was submerged! Almost all the paint had been worn off by the rocks ( there was still some on and it was solid), there was no swelling, and no cracking anywhere particularly at the belly grommet and belly weight area....no cracking at all! I was sold! Could post pics of the plug later? Oh....and 1 eye was missing!

Cant ask for a better test than that... it's just an experiment.... like I said I'll give it a whirl... on the other hand, I've been walking this earth long enough not to put all my eggs in one basket.. half of each batch will still be sealed in BLO... I'm not in buisness so I have nothing to loose... only to gain.. at least my experiment gives us something to rehash one more time..
BTW... I picked Tung oil because after some research I found it has been sealing wood as long as BLO.. and is the main ingreediant in Water Lox which I know some guy's have been using for some time ....

Nice if the tung oil hardens the wood a bit like you say Joe! I was just expressing my experience for others to digest! There are many sealers that work well and they all have their own + and -! It would get boring if we were not trying new things......right? :)

Hey, Joe, how long does it take for that stuff to dry....when I was using BLO i used to have to wait a solid week to 10 days before i could paint it.

I let my blo/mins dry for a minimum of 5 days in the warmer months.....7 days in the winter! No problem! No need to rush it! How long were you dipping Kev?

Kev- hardwoods that I really let soak it up I leave alone for 24 hrs,,,, but if you use it on cedars overnight is fine,,,,

Rookie question
 

What is BLO?

24 hours is fine.. dry as a bone...

I give BLO 10 days.. as I've said before, time is not an issue with me, I've got no issues whatsoever, no paint adhesion problems etc...... I've got a million things going at once, I'm just loooking to see if I personaly find something that works better for me... and though i'd share with "the group"

Another name for cocaine, which is what you need to be on to use that stuff. Takes for ever to dry, and the rags like to ignite spontaneously in your trash can and warm up your foundation for you.

I'm no expert on this, but I think BLO (boiled linseed oil) is just a wood oil with very poor crosslinking/drying behaviour. Varnishes and Tung oils are related compounds that dry much faster. I do not believe there is ANY advantage to using BLO for ANY kind of wood finishing, unless you want something cheap to spread on your cedar shingles and make them all nasty black. Yeah it works, but there is nothing special about it and plenty of other stuff works as well (and more safely).

Boiled Linseed Oil..

The main difference between BLO and Tung oil, is BLO requires heat to cure/dry....Where as Tung oil, relies on oxygen to cure..
Which brings me to a possible problem, skinning on the surface, I've got a 1 gallon can ( with cover) that I am using, by keeping the can full and covered, skinning has not ( as of yet) been an issue, it's been almost a month.. so far so good..

This is the big problem I was having when i was using waterlox. Great sealer but you have to be very careful about it skinning over. One way I've heard to fix it to make sure air isn't penetrating the can is to take cellophane over the opening before you close the jar. Then by putting the lid over the cellophane you effectively make it air tight.

I don't post much because I am content to sit back and learn from all you guys, but I have been using tung oil and turps with a splash of spar varnish for several years now and have had great results. I usually let dry for 1-2 days and then use rattle can oil primer as the base for my finish. Have had no problems with splitting, water-logging or adhesion.

I've tried tung oil, and had good results with it. I saw it on that woodworks show on DIY. The guy there (great woodworker btw) put on everything for a real nice finish. I got some in wal mart when they were doing a remodel for 1.00 a can. I also liked the way it dried.
I am going to try to make some small swimming baits for freshwater this year and was going to try that. Sealed a bunch of topwater stuff with it and no problems so far. I have smaller cans with a pop top. I put it in a good sealing glass jar. Still did get some drying on the top layer, but was able to keep the stuff in the original can in good shape.

Joe you'll find your plugs are much tougher if they are hard underneath the paint and clear coat .. I'm using death in a can ... cpes.. good stuff ,,very toxic .. what eles is new ..

Gives ya a nice glow...

OK.....here is the straight dope from an excellent book by Bob Flexner called "Understanding Wood Finishing".

Linseed oil comes from flax seed, but dries too slowly to be useful.
Boiled Linseed oil is made by adding metallic driers to speed drying (they used to heat the oil to dissolve them hence the "boiled" name). BLO penetrates deeply because it dries so slowly but has poor water resistance.

Tung oil comes from Tung trees in China. It is used in many high end paints and varnishes because it is more water resistant than BLO, but only after 5-6 coats used by itself. It is gummy when thick (dries soft like BLO)

Varnish, is an oil to which resin (polyurethane is a resin) has been added then heated. It dries much faster than straight oils. It doesn't penetrate as deeply because of it's shorter drying time, but is more water resistant and dries "harder".

CPES is a volatile thin form of epoxy that was developed to kill plug builders in Brockton and keep them from flooding the market with penis replica plugs.

Hope that straightens things out a bit.

sorry eddie, i'll pray for you.

:rotf2::biglaugh:

in the old days
 

of wooden ships

and wooden Gutters on houses
...the installers would fill the gutters
with Linseed oil to water proof them :uhuh:
and have the drain all stuffed up

But...
I like tung oil for gun stocks too..
used to apply it with my thumb
and you can do many coats too.

I just sealed a couple of batches using Polyurethane /turpentine .
About 60/40 . I soaked no more than 5 minutes ,hung out to dry .
Results seem good . dried faster than blo [if that stuff ever dries?] 2days felt good to go .
I've been giving plugs a light sanding before priming . The poly seemed like it would prevent good adhesion. After a light sanding priming went well .. Paint to follow:soon:

Good thing we have the CPES taking care of the Brockton problem.

This Valentines Day I'll be giving out the evasive vagina plug . One has your name on it .. No strings attached ..