Tung Oil for finish on restoring an old wooden View Camera?

[Doremus Scudder]

Late to the party here, but...

I use "pure" tung oil for furniture projects (bookshelves, etc.). What I use is billed as 100% pure (brand name "Hope's"). The first coat, if not thinned, takes a couple/three weeks to dry enough for a second to be applied. After that, subsequent coats dry more quickly, but it's still not a speedy process. And, if the weather is cool, everything goes much more slowly.

If one thins the first coat with mineral spirits, the process is a bit faster, at least for the first coat.

That said, I like the finish I get from tung oil. I have a pair of speaker cabinets I built in the late '70s and finished with tung oil that still look great. The finish is almost bullet proof; water can puddle up and sit on it for hours (more than once overnight...) with zero effect.

The finish on my newer bookshelves seems hard enough and looks great (cherry with 4-5 coats of tung oil).

I like using oil since I don't need a really dust-free area to apply the finish. Any dust caught in the finish coat comes right off with 0000 steel wool or just a polish with a cloth.

The only real downside is that you need time. Tung oil finishes don't dry; they "cure" through a process of oxidation, that goes very slowly and is really only fully complete after a year or so. The surface hardens up more quickly, but then the oil that's penetrated the wood doesn't have any exposure to air, so it cures very slowly. If you have time, it's great. If not...

I've used this same tung oil for my Wista DX beater field cameras. They get a lot of use and the original lacquer (or whatever) gets dinged and chipped off down to bare wood. A touch-up with tung oil restores and protects very well and blends in nicely with the original finish. I just wipe it on with bare fingers, let it sit a half-hour or so and then wipe off with a clean cloth.

I, personally, wouldn't hesitate to use tung oil for an entire camera refinish. The advantage would be that maintaining the finish would be very easy; just oil over scratches and dings and voilà.

Best,

Doremus

 

[DREW WILEY]

Doug - Milk paint, blah blah, a lot of snake oil rather than tung oil marketing as far as I'm concerned .... I had to deal with people with enviro sensitivities so severe that they resorted to milk paint hype as the alleged answer. Then they turned out to be even more allergic to milk protein, casein, lactic acid, etc. than to tiny amounts of hydrocarbon dryers still in acrylic paints. I couldn't help them. Seemingly nobody could. Some wallpapered their houses with aluminum foil, lived way off in the woods with an ocean breeze. Some commit suicide. Complicated, extremely difficult to diagnose as per specifics, and very sad. But when I was dealing extensively with the paint industry, 90% of the companies used snake-oil BS marketing. Just a handful were straight shooters and had truly earned a reputation for honest specifications. Glad I'm retired from that rat race, among others.

Doremus - the better off-the-shelf tung oils incorporate the driers in a secondary ingredient, like phenolic or urethane resin.
They fully cure in a matter of weeks rather than months (depending on the climate). But that brings up another complication. A product which claims a certain relatively fast dry or cure time based on an ideal set of test variables in a warm dry climate is apt to take far longer in a damp, humid, or cool climate. That's particularly the case nowadays as VOC content gets more and more restricted. Products that were predictable in the past might prove quite disappointing in reformulated fashion.

 

[Doremus Scudder]

I get the climate point. Here in Eugene, OR, there's no point in trying to do any finish work of any kind from November through March. Even good old latex paint takes forever to dry!

 

[AgX]

First tine I hear of Tung Oil... And I have been at furniture restorers workplaces.

What I did read on Wikipedia on its smell rather deterred me. In general the smell of things is a big thing to me. Did I really miss something by not knowing of Tung Oil?

 

[DREW WILEY]

You probably smelled the odor of all the decaying bullshit on Wikipedia. Tung oil in most any sellable fashion is modified and blended, and smells about like any other finishing oil except lemon oil; you mainly smell the solvents. Tung oil has been an ingredient in numerous oils and varnishes for many decades; but because it's slightly on the expensive side, it's less commonly used than modified linseed oils, oiticica oil, and now, soy-derived alkyds. The use of jojoba oil is even less common. But how things are often deceptively labeled for marketing purposes complicates the actual chemical makeup question. The future, however, belongs to hybrid water-based finishes.

 

[Doremus Scudder]

AgX,

I never saw any tung oil commonly available when I lived in Europe (30 years in Vienna). It may be more difficult to source there.

Best,

Doremus

 

[5x7shooter]

........ The future, however, belongs to hybrid water-based finishes.

Hello, Drew: I've done woodworking for 35 years, almost as long as large format, and it's obvious to me that you are knowledgeable about wood products as well as LF. There was a time that I used Watco a lot but am in the process of taking all of it to the landfill on hazardous waste disposal day. Aside from the toxicity and poor water-spot resistance, I too have seen it create nasty fires spontaneously, so I always water-soaked every Watco rag or paper towel immediately..

However, before seeing the light, I did a fair bit of furniture and camera refinishing with Watco. Can you think of any quality product nationally available in local stores that could be used to touch up over top of old Watco finishes or sometimes Varathane varnishes without completely stripping and refinishing a field camera or table, which I currently don't have the time or shop space to do? I'm basically looking for a touch-up product.

 

[Nicholas Lindan]

My vote is for Waterlox Marine Finish.

Don't apply to any sliding surfaces. I know you know that. So did I.

 

[DREW WILEY]

5X7shooter - The industry can turn on a dime, and I've been retired for three years now. Most national brands are junk brands now, to meet the cheapo demand of DIY home centers.
So you'd have to think regionally. It's possible that some marine supplier or paint store in Anchorage sells Daly's products, made in the Seattle area. They have high-quality wipe-on tung/urethane blends resistant to water spotting, as well as a selection of good urethane oils per se, plus short-chain hardwood-penetrating oils like Seafin, often used on teak boats.
These are oil-based products far far better than anyhthing Minwax or Watco makes. But I wouldn't use any of their water-based brush-on polyurethanes; just the wrong kind of product for a camera. There are a number of boatyards run by former customers of mine, big marine product stores, and even manufacturers of marine epoxies down by the Bay just fifteen minutes from me. But I never stop in because I already have enough samples of this an that to handle all my needs, including some Sikkens products excellent for wood camera touch-ups or as a refresher coat over worn poly finishes; but these have been reformulated by now and won't perform the same. And I'm mostly done with my own cabinetry projects, but still have other remodeling headaches to go, like tile work.