Maple workbench finish?

Linseed goes yellow in time, which always looks ugly on maple. Use tung instead, probably a commercial "finishing oil" mix that already has thinners and driers in it.

Then a hard wax.

These days I'm using an old 1/4" electric drill with a plastic bristle wire brush in it. Nice old '60s drill, all metal body, but not enough "grunt" for real drilling. It sits permanently on the shelf near the bench and just gets used for buffing out wax polishes. Using this instead of the usual bristle scrubbing brush I can buff out a much harder wax than usual (twice my usual carnauba content) with mittle effort.

classic workbench finish. just do it.

Ba r r y wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

I used BLO on my beech workbench, for exactly the same reason you described. I've been satisfied with the result. I never used wax on it ... I had some small concern about making the surface slippery.

Nate what about the ol' three equal parts mix? BLO, beeswax and turpentine? Wouldn't that be perfect for a bench?

Gotta put 'em in in the right order: Beeswax, Linseed oil, then Turpentine.

It's known as a BLT for short.

Particularly important if finishing a sandwich lay-up.

munch munch munch! EEEEEYYYYUCK!

Is that how you feed all the guests in your SHOP???

My maple is finished with a 1:1:1 poly/BLO/thinner mix. I wax about ever other month.

I'm very satisfied with it. Yup it's amber, but that just looks aged to me.

It sheds glue and finish drips easily. It is a bit slick, but I have never found that to be a liability.

-Steve

"AAvK" wrote in news:CABSd.109387$mt.26011@fed1read03:

Sounds good to me (and I think I recall that being mentioned in the Workbench Book). But I've never used it personally, so I can't say.

Maybe one of the more experienced guys here can comment.