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linseed oil is full of ass
I ought to have remembered that happening to have linseed oil around the house is not a good enough reason to finish a piece of wood with it. This was stuff I picked up in an Ikea buying trance since the cutting board claimed it wanted it. It turned out to be linseed oil, blech, with metallic driers, and I don't think I like to eat cobalt or whatever salts, and after all the cutting board is probably better off bare.
So I had put together a little bridge shelf to hold the Doepfer over the ARP, for synergetic modular fun. Pretty tulip board I picked out; that ethereal purple flame figuring never shows up after finishing, but still I felt bad about the shiny zinc galvanized screw heads I left exposed in the wood. And then I put linseed oil on it.
The trouble with linseed oil is that even in thin layers, and even after days of time and lots of UV, it never seems to cure hard. (This must be a function of the amount of driers, but that's the luck I've had with the stuff.) Once you've built it up to a satin-gloss film, it's slightly tacky until the end of time; that's just the way the cured mass feels, like you'll leave fingerprints on it if you're not careful.
Paste wax is an all purpose finish-rescue elixir. At least, I like a waxy touch better than a tacky one. And I like the luster a little better, the anisotropic rubbed gloss. And it's at least more waterproof than linseed oil, not that I hope to have water trickling around my synthesizers.
The guy working in the wood-finish aisle at the Home Depot on 99 obviously didn't believe "paste wax, you know, you put it on wood and buff it" existed at all, but was too well-trained in customer service to say so to my face. It turns out they keep it in a bizarre and diminutive wax enclave in the lumber section.
Now what am I going to do with a pint of linseed oil too denatured to relabel as phytoestrogen-rich health food? Maybe I can see if I really can get some oily rags to spontaneously combust.
Even if I were in a band, it probably wouldn't be the right sort of band to call it the Oily Rags.
So I had put together a little bridge shelf to hold the Doepfer over the ARP, for synergetic modular fun. Pretty tulip board I picked out; that ethereal purple flame figuring never shows up after finishing, but still I felt bad about the shiny zinc galvanized screw heads I left exposed in the wood. And then I put linseed oil on it.
The trouble with linseed oil is that even in thin layers, and even after days of time and lots of UV, it never seems to cure hard. (This must be a function of the amount of driers, but that's the luck I've had with the stuff.) Once you've built it up to a satin-gloss film, it's slightly tacky until the end of time; that's just the way the cured mass feels, like you'll leave fingerprints on it if you're not careful.
Paste wax is an all purpose finish-rescue elixir. At least, I like a waxy touch better than a tacky one. And I like the luster a little better, the anisotropic rubbed gloss. And it's at least more waterproof than linseed oil, not that I hope to have water trickling around my synthesizers.
The guy working in the wood-finish aisle at the Home Depot on 99 obviously didn't believe "paste wax, you know, you put it on wood and buff it" existed at all, but was too well-trained in customer service to say so to my face. It turns out they keep it in a bizarre and diminutive wax enclave in the lumber section.
Now what am I going to do with a pint of linseed oil too denatured to relabel as phytoestrogen-rich health food? Maybe I can see if I really can get some oily rags to spontaneously combust.
Even if I were in a band, it probably wouldn't be the right sort of band to call it the Oily Rags.