Yuku free message boards

Thanks, Chuck, that's exactly the kind of first-hand experience I was hoping to find here. My experience with Murdoch's on furniture is similar to yours: it takes multiple applications to build up a finish. That's not so bad on a tabletop, and as I said, I've been very happy with the results on furniture, achieving a limpid surface finish that imparts real depth to the wood without the plastic look. And Murdoch's has proven to be very durable as a table top finish. The excellent results I achieved with the one S-W product led me to wonder about the suitability of the other, the S-W spar, for rods.

It's surprising to me that S-W would attribute the gelatinization or accelerated gelatinization of their spar varnish to the N2 in Bloxygen; my experience has been exactly the opposite. I've used several tung oil based finishes that gelatinize once the can has been opened. However, I've been able to effectively retard gelatinization by using the canned gas that's sold as a wine preserver. It's a mixture of CO2, nitrogen, and argon, probably not unlike Bloxygen. I suspect that you got varnish napalm because enough air (and perhaps moisture in the air) was introduced into the varnish when it was poured from the can into the dipping tube, and the oxidation part of the 'drying' process started deep in the tube. That little blanket of Bloxygen that you were able to put on the surface of the varnish in the dip tube had no effect on what was going on below. I don't fully understand the chemistry of tung oil, but I have observed that it exhibits some weird behaviors. When "pure" tung oil gets cold, it forms waxy granular crystals; when it is heated, it forms a jelly. When it begins to gelatinize in the can (or tube), it's more like a kind of coagulation or a shift in the colloidal state. It doesn't really dry; it becomes this weird insoluble jelly. I completely understand why you would be reluctant to buy another gallon for the dip tube.

I want to like tung oil finish I but can't trust to behave predictably. And the S-W product line has great appeal to me because of their commitment to quality (even if it comes at a price), and their focus on "natural", low toxicity constituents.

And thanks for the heads-up on the use of Murdoch's for wraps. I'm happy to bank on your experience there, too, and not learn for myself the hard way.

Tim