raw linseed oil vs BLO vs tung oil vs anything else

markv said:
do a google search about the effect mineral oil has on leather over time
"The addition of mineral oils may lead to more rapid decay of non-synthetic stitching or speed breakdown of the leather itself" this is mentioned in a wiki article about Neatsfoot oil.
pine tar/BLO for wood, Neatsfoot oil for leather
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MARKV- Thanks for the info about mineral oil so I did do a search and I could only find info from a guy who was making his secret sauce leather preservative that
said mineral oil breaks down leather. I was interested because I have been using mineral oil on my boots, shoes, tool belts, saddles and furniture since 1972
when grandpa said he treated all his stuff with motor oil. I have seen a lot of leather stuff go bad ... dry out and crack etc .... in my lifetime but none of my stuff.
Amazingly, I still strap on my high school football cleats from 1972 every time I cut grass. this was from a time when they had longer cleats that have been subsequently outlawed.

I am extremely skeptical of the guys claim and it seems very very vague. What exactly does his term "break down" mean ? Normally old leather dries out, becomes brittle
and cracks. I reasoned that any oil that will dry up and harden will of course do the same if it is in your leather. if you stick an open jar of mineral oil on the shelf with a quarter inch of fluid in the bottom, in 40 years you will still have a quarter inch left. not true with beef tallow, lard, vegetable oil, butter, lanolin ( sheep skin oil) neatsfoot oil etc.
For another thing, apparently bacteria wont eat the mineral oil. Over the years I have occasionally rubbed some motor oil on shovel, rake and axe handles that have
dried out or I have bought at garage sales where they have been in the weather for many years and the oil soaked in just fine and I think helped to
restore or at least preserve the wood in its current state and prevent moisture intrusion simply because the wood is soaked with oil and there is no room
for water.

The same articles also said silicone is bad bad bad for leather which I also use but not sure why.... mainly I think because I read that it is on the commercial
boot waterproofing stuff that you spray on construction and hunting boots etc. I am just copying them. I also do not think that silicone fluid
will ever dry up. So if stuff we let soak into leather never dries up, how can the leather ever dry up ?

Ultimately I think the same logic would apply to wood.

Which brings to mind the whole industry of backyard deck maintenance and preservative products. The best are undisputedly oil based
tinted stain liquids that soak in and water proof the wood decks along with add color and prevent mold mildew fungus etc.

A couple years ago after finishing my biannual deck restoration, I did paint some shovel and rake and broom handles with the stuff
since I had some left over. Since they are all stored inside it was largely cosmetic in effect but I bet they would do better if left out in the
weather.
 
Steve Tall said:
If you want to use silicone, then Food Grade Silicone Grease would be a better choice than Silicone Brake Fluid. The brake fluid has a toxic ingredient that can be absorbed through the skin, according to this data sheet from a manufacturer:

http://www.clearcoproducts.com/pdf/msds/specialty/MSDS-DOT-5-Silicone-Brake-Fluid.pdf

Food Grade Silicon Grease, on the other hand, has no components that are considered toxic, according to this data sheet from the same manufacturer:

http://www.clearcoproducts.com/pdf/msds/grease/MSDS-Silicone_Grease_3005.pdf
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im surprised someone actually used silicone brake fluid for anything, without researching the stuff....

thats like something specifiying USP mineral oil, and saying " ahh, this Pennsoil 5w-30 high mileage will work just fine..."

DOT 5 brake fluid is not pure silicone, FAR FAR from it(70-75%). silicone based hydraulic fluid is just that, silicone based.

on top of it being improper for boots, its also a terrible performing brake fluid.

like steve said, find something else to apply to anything you will be touching, or to apply to anything for that matter really. if you are looking for a silicone liquid for water repellent properties, look around on Shin-Etsu website, they specialize in high tech silicone products for any and all purposes. good stuff.

SuperLube also makes some H1 Food grade silicone products, i havent used the silicone stuff, but the greases are top notch. im sure the silicone stuff is just as good.
 
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Chicken Little.... " the sky is falling ! " you and Steve act like I was suggesting silicone fluid be used for ice cream topping. Re read your MSDS
info. The ingredient that causes skin irritation ( not gives you instant cancer ) is 2 percent and the silicone component is 95 percent.
Everything I put it on soaks it all up so how much do you really think is absorbed through my skin weeks and months down the road if
I should touch my boots to knock the red clay off of them ? Of even if I chop a few trees down that I had applied to the axe handle ?

Fact is Pennsoil, Castrol and Quaker State are all very fine leather preservatives. I know for a fact. Also I doubt if I am exposed to one thousandth
of the oil that mechanics that rebuild/repair engines all day every day in their jobs. No doubt there are a lot of unneeded additives but the
motor oil gets the job done without any meaningful negative effects.
 
I used to use Dubbin and other silicone/wax based compounds on my leather work boots as water-proofing agents all through the 1970s. I could never get more than a year out of a pair of boots before they fell apart. At one point I got lazy or ticked-off and bought rubber boots for damp conditions and gave up on oiling leather boots. Strangely enough after that all of my leather boots actually lasted for years until the soles or the leather wore out. What I figure was happening is the leather could no longer breathe due to the coating and was rotting from the inside out due to sweaty feet. How this might apply to wood handled axes I don't know but I certainly don't waterproof leather anymore!
 
In the army a bunch of us figured out that
Liquid floor wax (Bonerwachs in German)
made them boots shiny without having to polish at all! Also the water resistance was through the roof! What a great discovery?
After a couple of months the leather developed penny sized bubbles on top where the boots moved most. Boots treated with normal shoe polish didn't have that problem and only got wrinkly.
Never checked what was in that floor wax.
 
I've had knifemakers recommend neatsfoot oil and then beeswax for sheaths. Some simply use beeswax for both wood and leather, but I don't think this is a good idea since it doesn't add oil to either as far as I know.

I like birch tar, pretty easy to make yourself (don't want to breathe the fumes though). And Huberd's Shoe Grease which is beeswax and pine tar (no synthetics and impurities which it says can deteriorate and stretch leather).
 
Steve Tall said:
I stand by my claim that "food grade" is better than "hazardous... suspected of causing cancer".
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With the overwhelming voter-naive/ignorant/uneducated climate of 'political correctness' and 'better safe than sorry' policies that are evident these days I strongly suspect that if an independent research agency were to be tasked with meticulous disassembly and analysis of a recent human cadaver, specifically looking for exotic chemicals and cancer-causing agents, they'd have to declare 1/2 century old+ n. Americans to be "toxic waste" which have to be incinerated accordingly.
2-4-D (for instance) is a wonderfully discrete plant growth hormone simulator that causes broad-leaved plants to grow entirely out of control and consequently grow to death, but activists managed to paint it as a 'lifeform killer' anyway. Where does all this start and stop anyway?
 
Chignecto Woodsman said:
I've had knifemakers recommend neatsfoot oil and then beeswax for sheaths. Some simply use beeswax for both wood and leather, but I don't think this is a good idea since it doesn't add oil to either as far as I know.

I like birch tar, pretty easy to make yourself (don't want to breathe the fumes though). And Huberd's Shoe Grease which is beeswax and pine tar (no synthetics and impurities which it says can deteriorate and stretch leather).
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i don't know what to believe.
i've not had much use of Silicone on leather. always used mink oil. But then again, mink oil seems to disappear after a short time.
i am going to try a new mixture of pine tar/BLO on some axe handles and see how this works out.
i do know that some Neatsfoot oil is adulterated with petroleum. i can remember the guys who played baseball back in the last century 1960's to 1999 used Neatsfoot oil on their gloves. i'd like to see some of these gloves to inspect the quality of the leather after all these years. might prove something. i would think pure neatsfoot oil coming from a cow would be good for leather?
what was this thread about? lol.

buzz
 
Chignecto Woodsman said:
"Where does all this start and stop anyway?"

Something like this, I think:
http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html
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Agent_H said:
Ok. I read all of that lol. Definitely answered all my questions. Assumed it was about a shop-grade vacuum...
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I'll forgive Asimov for his estimate on the life of the sun because that guess was made in the 1950's. In reality we've only got about 5 billion years. So live hearty, men. The end is in sight!
 
Raw linseed oil anyone? Found at an antique shop. I'm wondering if I should have bought it, but at $22, I'm pretty sure I can get it new without the risk of age-induced oxidation.

 
SC T100 said:
Raw linseed oil anyone? Found at an antique shop. I'm wondering if I should have bought it, but at $22, I'm pretty sure I can get it new without the risk of age-induced oxidation.

Click to expand...
Organic raw linseed/flax oil was cheap even cheaper than the normal unboiled oil at the rainforest a few months ago.
Might still be.
 
Square_peg said:
I'll forgive Asimov for his estimate on the life of the sun because that guess was made in the 1950's. In reality we've only got about 5 billion years. So live hearty, men. The end is in sight!
Click to expand...

What are the chances of stacking a woodpile the size of the sun in that time?

I'd also be interested in knowing more about raw and boiled. When I used raw it did seem like it soaked in more, but is quite a mess and harder to dry. I think OldAxeman recommended Raw earlier in the thread.
 
Another vote for tung oil. BLO is cheaper and easy to find, and it works very well, but I find on lighter handles like ash it turns them an ugly yellow.
 
Fundamentally I cannot buy into using any kind of oil that is (was) used in paint and we know dries. How can it preserve the wood if it
is dry and create a substance that will not absorb more water if it gets wet.
I still think using an oil that will not ever dry is better.
 
Cure may be a better term to use rather than dry. Most of these oils dry to the touch in a relatively short amount of time but take weeks to completely cure. If an oil product doesn't cure / dry, as I see it, it either evaporates or never does anything but get tacky / sticky. Mineral oil and beeswax is good alternative. All these oils wear off with use and the item needs to be sanded and retreated eventually. To me its not a big deal. Its all a short term deal with hafts.
 
Mineral oils do not ever dry and remain in wood as the wood is a sponge and the oil prevents water from absorbing because there is no room.
The oil may indeed rub off or be wiped off on the outside but the inner wood will still be moist with the oil.
 
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