boiled linseed oil....

so i picked some of this stuff up and when applied to metal, cloth, or wood...it didn't heat up like the warning on the back of the can said. i even poured some in a jar and set it down to see how long it would take to become a bit thicker (for my intended application)...it's still as runny as day 1. it's now been about 3 weeks.

has anyone experienced this? i know the warnings are there to cover the ass of the manufacturer....but...

one other question about wood.....specifically teak wood. i'd like to make a base for a wheeltruing stand like this....

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base would only ever see a pile of spokes, and maybe a bottle of oil or a pencil so no real heavy use....

my question is....does the teak wood need to be conditioned or sealed or treated in anyway before putting it to use? would honduras mahogany (my other choice) be any better suited.

the stand will not move from its place on my bench. this is not something i will travel with.

my other options are various types of maple (but i don't much care for the light colored woods) and maybe something else i haven't thought of.

Reply to
sal bass
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Be careful with linseed oil; if you use it on a rag and crumple the rag in the trash, a fire is not only possible but likely. Heat is generated by oxidation of the oil as it dries. Heed the warning.

Dave

Reply to
Dave W

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> the base would only ever see a pile of spokes, and maybe a bottle of

BLO is usually mixed/thinned 2/3 - 1/3 with turpentine and will indeed dry very slowly. In my experience, drying is not the right word for BLO - is just soaks into the wood. In a jar, it may take months. All precautions should apply when dealing with oily rags. They will spontaneously combust in the right situation. (I rinse mine in water, hang to dry outside for a few days before disposal.) For the stand in the link, teak, mahogany, walnut will do fine. However, if just a shop stand, why not make one from a less expensive wood? Oak, Pine, Alder, Poplar stained dark?

Dave

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Reply to
Teamcasa

Maybe I should take some camping?? :)

Reply to
Locutus

The oil dries by relatively slow oxidation, not evaporation. A jar of the stuff might form a skin but isn't going to thicken.

A rag or paper towel full of BLO *may* generate enough heat to ignite because the oil is spread over a large area and therefore oxidizes more rapidly.

Reply to
dadiOH

Got that right. Did a linseed oil finish on a tile kitchen floor for a customer. Put the oily rags in a 5 gal bucket, put the bucket in the back of my pickup and drove the 30 or so miles back to my shop. Time I got back, smoke was coming out of the bucket pretty heavily. The rags weren't in flames yet, but they were glowing embers like charcoal.

IIRC, a building project in cc Philly burned down due to oily rags left on the site a few years back.

-- Timothy Juvenal

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Reply to
Hambone Slim

"Hambone Slim" wrote

Growing up, I had the fire danger of oily rags preached to me continuosly.

When I got a house of my own, I put some oily rags out on the concrete patio to test this theory on a sunny day. In just a couple of hours, they were heating up pretty good. I became a safety fanatic about oily rags after that.

I deal with them in two ways. One is to rinse in water and leave them flat on the concrete. The other thing I do is just to throw them into a metal garbage can and burn them.

Reply to
Lee Michaels

weird........i had a rag that had about a 4" by 4" area soaked quite well....and it didn't even /feel/ warm.

maybe i got the cheap stuff? the brand is called Crown.

Dave W wrote:

Reply to
sal bass

i see. that makes a lot of sense. maybe i'll set another rag out on the driveway and see what happens.

dadiOH wrote:

Reply to
sal bass

not a shop but for my personal use here at home.

stains are nice but i seem them in the same way i see cologne. a bit deceptive.

which of the ones you list is the darkest?

Teamcasa wrote:

Reply to
sal bass

If you *want* it to get hot, crumple it up and put it somewhere there isn't a lot of air circulating to dissipate the heat.

dadiOH ___________

sal bass wrote:

Reply to
dadiOH

Snip

American Black Walnut is generally the darkest of the three.

Dave

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Reply to
Teamcasa

Just latter it all over your body... keeps you warm but the bugs stick to it pretty bad. ;~)

Reply to
John Grossbohlin

Keeping them in a pretty airtight glass jar also works fine. They use up the oxygen in there, then - no more heating effect after that. Tiny amounts of oxygen seepage won't matter. Allows me reuse the rags for a while.

Friends of mine managed to burn down their newly built house by leaving linseed-oily rags on the freshly polished floor and going to town to celebrate & recuperate over a cup of coffee ....

-Peter

Reply to
Peter Huebner

If you leave it out flat, it will hardly heat up. Nor if it's totally soaked.

Think wadded up cloth (so the heat can build up inside) and after-use-moist (so the oxygen can get at the surface of the cloth fibres) - lots of fibres = huge surface area to oxyddize. If your cloth is in fact sopping wet, that would in practical terms reduce the effective surface area for oxydisation to take place, and you would get _less_ heating effect.

It's a chain reaction.

-Peter

Reply to
Peter Huebner

A word of caution about that: such an experiment could give a false sense of security, since if the conditions aren't exactly right, you'll never see the heating. You need enough oxygen for the oxidation to start and sustain itself as it begins to heat up and accelerate, without enough air for convection to carry away the heat and avoid the acceleration of the process.

I haven't had luck striking that balance when I have tried, but have heard enough to know that I don't want to stumble on that balance by accident!

BTW, thinking of those two elements (adequate oxygen and inadequate cooling airflow) explains the strategies for avoiding spontaneous combustion: a sealed metal or glass container, or under water limits the oxygen, while spreading out the rags to dry (oxidize) assures enough airflow for cooling. I've never understood the rinsing before spreading out to dry--not sure what that is supposed to accomplish.

If you use the sealed container approach so you can reuse the rags, you still might want to use the spread-out-and-dry approach before disposing of it; if your sealed glass jar gets thrown into a garbage bag full of wood shavings and the jar gets broken while moving the bag, you could have a bad situation on your hands.

Reply to
alexy

If it is barely damp with BLO, what you should see in a few days to a couple of weeks is that the rag has become stiff and no longer feels oily, as the BLO has oxidized. Out on the driveway is a good place. I let rags cure flat on a concrete floor or spread over a metal rod, away from combustibles.

Reply to
alexy

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