September 20, 2010, 02:19 PM
|
#11
|
Staff
Join Date: March 4, 2005
Location: Ohio
Posts: 21,013
|
You can apply it by any method. The main points are:
- Sand the wood with 180 to 220 grit paper.
- Dewhisker it per Dfariswheel's recommendation. (Bob Flexnor recommends dewhiskering not only to prevent the wet oil from raising the grain, but also to prevent permeating moisture from doing it after the finish is applied, which makes the surface feel rough.)
- Clean the wood of sawdust with a tack cloth, brush, vacuum, or even compressed air (if you have an oil-free source).
- For the first coat, especially, flood the surface with oil and keep it wet by adding more oil to any spot that soaks in enough to lose wetness. The dewhiskered wood should be considered sanded. You don't need the sandpaper I described earlier for applying the first coat.
- Keep it that way for a while. I use 20 minutes with Danish Oil, but you could even go up to half an hour with something more viscous like tung oil.
- Wipe the oil off with a clean rag. Check it every hour for bleeding, where wet oil comes back to the surface in a patch. Wipe the wet bleed spots off. Keep doing that every hour until the bleeding stops.
- Repeat the above, smooth sanding with 600 grit paper between coats or using the multi-grade sandpaper-as-applicator method I described, employing 600 grit as the applicator for all coats subsequent to the second coat. You can apply all coats after the first one with a cloth if you choose to, as it doesn't take as much to wet the wood surface after the first layer has sealed it. It won't need re-wetting as much, either, unless you have an unusually porous spot.
__________________
Gunsite Orange Hat Family Member
CMP Certified GSM Master Instructor
NRA Certified Rifle Instructor
NRA Benefactor Member and Golden Eagle
Last edited by Unclenick; September 22, 2010 at 11:22 AM.
Reason: typo fix
|
|
|