Wood handplane finish

[Richard Dooling]

Anyone know what finish was traditional for wood handplanes? BLO maybe?

[Robert Rozaieski]

Traditionally I don't think they would have had any finish at all. Most I have don't show evidence of ever having been finished. The oils from your hands will give the wood a nice patina with time and use. I usually use BLO on mine after cleaning but it's probably not necessary.

[Richard Dooling]

Ok, thanks.

I've been using Danish oil just to help keep them clean.

[Mark Seay]

At our local Woodcraft store they offer a class for building a Krenov style hand plane and we used the Beall Buffing system which uses three different waxes with the final wax being carnuba. It gave it a beautiful sheen and made the sole very slick and has held up nicely so far.

[David Keller NC]

For American planes and most British planes, Robert's correct - there wasn't any finish. During the middle to late 19th centuries, some of the bigger British firms offered French Polish on some types of planes as an extra-cost option. Typically, these were the more expensive joinery planes, like chamfer, plow and fillister planes. Many of these planes retain some or all of this finish because they weren't used all that much.

George Wilson noted that at Colonial Williamsburg, they used a soaking tung oil finish rather than BLO because BLO allowed mold growth, while tung oil did not.

As an aside, Clark and Williams (a modern manufacturer of traditional wooden planes) uses a wiping varnish for their planes. I've one of them, and can verify that the finish is fairly tough and wear resistant, and will slow down rapid moisture content changes in the wooden stock.

[Ben Davis]

For American planes and most British planes, Robert's correct - there wasn't any finish. During the middle to late 19th centuries, some of the bigger British firms offered French Polish on some types of planes as an extra-cost option. Typically, these were the more expensive joinery planes, like chamfer, plow and fillister planes. Many of these planes retain some or all of this finish because they weren't used all that much.

George Wilson noted that at Colonial Williamsburg, they used a soaking tung oil finish rather than BLO because BLO allowed mold growth, while tung oil did not.

As an aside, Clark and Williams (a modern manufacturer of traditional wooden planes) uses a wiping varnish for their planes. I've one of them, and can verify that the finish is fairly tough and wear resistant, and will slow down rapid moisture content changes in the wooden stock.
Interesting pieces of history David. I too was under the impression that the "classic" finishing for most wooden hand planes was... nothing. I suppose more correctly it was a very slowly and incrementally applied finish of hand oil.

[george wilson]

I have written before that a good thing to do is: Clamp the plane's sole down on a flat,or slightly upwardly bowed piece of wood. The iron and wedge are not in the plane. Stop off the mouth of the plane with good fresh window putty,maybe the lowest 3/8",or 1/2" of the plane's mouth. This is one of the few ways to keep oil from excessively bleeding out through the plane's mouth,and leaking away. Fill the mouth with raw linseed oil,not boiled.You need the oil to dry slowly.Or,you could use tung oil,I suppose.I never used tung oil,as this was before I discovered the mold resistance of tung oil. I always used raw linseed oil. As the oil level in the throat of the plane goes down,replenish it right up to the top.Long planes can take several throats full,but the oil will bleed completely from one end of the plane to the other,even on jointers. This impregnates the plane with oil that will slowly harden,making the plane moisture proof,and self lubricating. I did it to all my wooden planes.Works great.Adds some heft,too. Wipe any excess oil off the surfaces of the plane after it is saturated with oil.

I got this trick from a very old English cabinet maker in the early 70's.

I think the old British planes got that thick,dark brown patina that you see on many of them from wiping tallow on them.I have seen this thick finish on many different wooden tools and wooden machines,like treadle lathes,even on a very large horse driven butter churn in a museum in London. It was real thick on the churn,and upon the big wooden gears some feet away from the churn.The churn was a wooden keg of about 40 gallon size. A large overhead wooden gear was about 10' in diameter. The horse walked in circles under it. Over the years,the tallow hardened,probably aided in its buildup by wood or other dust,dirty hands,etc. I can tell you that it is not resistant to water at all,though.It will wash right off if gotten wet.I found that out once many years ago when I had to drill some holes outside with a beechwood brace,and got caught in the rain. For this reason,I am sure it is not linseed oil,which would be much more water proof.

[Mark Koury]

George,

A fascinating technique! Certainly new to me.

What time-frame are you dealing with here? How long would say a 12 inch plane take to be saturated? How do you know when “it’s done?” Does it have to be renewed during the life of the plane?

Thanks for your participation on this board! You add a lot.

[george wilson]

Mark,maybe 2 or 3 days.Depends upon how dense the wood is.Once the oil bleeds out of the ends,it is done,and it hardens,so no more oil will ever be absorbed.

[Zahid Naqvi]

George, obviously this techniques has been tried and tested. But does it impact the ability of the wedge to grab the plane body. If the oil saturates all the wood I would presume it makes the surface "slick". Wouldn't that make for a slippery wedge. Just curious.

[David Keller NC]

Zahid - I can comment on this technique. I had a set of American molding planes that had been treated with raw linseed oil about 15 years ago. Generally speaking, the wedges would still hold because they held more through mechanical advantage than rough surfaces.

That said, though, 15 years later the planes were still bleeding linseed oil whenever it got above 70 degrees in the shop. That meant that they were always greasy and bit unpleasant to use.

The upside is exactly what George suggests - they're self lubricating.

However, to my taste I'd rather have the plane not grease up my hands, so I don't apply any finish to the wooden planes I have in use in the shop. Instead, I use a "plane wick" - which is basically a shop-made wooden tray with a beeswax insert. One simply drags the plane backwards over this wick every few strokes, and it's quite effective at lubing the soles of bench planes.

For molding planes, I use a cone of beeswax - the point makes it easy to get into the recesses of a quirked profile.

[george wilson]

I have never had my planes leak oil all the time like that,David!! Maybe it's because I always work in an air conditioned and heated shop,but I've never had that problem.

I'll have to take your word for it.I'm wondering how linseed oil could stay liquid for 15 years.

Zahid,I never had trouble with the wedge slipping,and I still have the treated planes in my shop. Maybe I should leave a few outdoors on a warm day and see if they start leaking oil.

David,is it possible that your oil was defective? Did you by any chance use EDIBLE linseed oil? It doesn't dry unless you heat it up to simmering for about a half hour to start the polymerizing process.The old cabinetmaker I got this from never had any such trouble either. I would HATE to always be getting linseed oil on my hands. I don't like the smell of old linseed oil.

Here's a strange story: My wife told me she missed the smell that I had when I was musical instrument maker,and became toolmaker. Some time later,I was using linseed oil in the shop,and she was excited that I had that smell again. It was linseed oil!! When she was a little girl,she would get into her grandmother's closet,and set up a little desk,and pretend it was an office.The closet smelled of linseed oil.She liked the smell I did my best to wash off my hands!!

[Richard Dooling]

An associated question about lubricating plane soles. Am I right in assuming this is done in the earlier stage, before final smoothing?

Wouldn’t the oil/bees wax/paraffin used to lube a sole interfere with glue and stains?

[george wilson]

I wouldn't advise use of any waxes,Richard,for surfaces you are gluing,but the dry oil did not actively get on wood I was planing and cause problems.

[Richard Dooling]

As always, thanks George.

I take back my endorsement for the idea of you putting together a book on your remarkable accomplishments - that would leave you less time to answer our questions!

Thanks

[David Keller NC]

"I'm wondering how linseed oil could stay liquid for 15 years."

That's actually very common - raw linseed oil (the "un-boiled" kind) will take a very long time to dry (decades). Raw linseed is the vehicle for most traditional formulation of artist's oils, and while the surface of an oil painting will partially dry to the touch after two or three weeks, it continues to dry/harden for many years.

This is, by the way, one way that art scholars can assess whether a painting is a fairly modern reproduction or an original. On a reproduction, the varnish may have crackled a bit (or a lot, if the reproduction was intended as a fake), but the underlying oil paint is intact. On a painting that's over 100 years old, many cracks will have developed in the paint itself as the linseed oil has finally hardened and is no longer flexible to changes in temperature and humidity.


"An associated question about lubricating plane soles. Am I right in assuming this is done in the earlier stage, before final smoothing?

Wouldn’t the oil/bees wax/paraffin used to lube a sole interfere with glue and stains? "

From an historical perspective, this wasn't an issue. Most furniture was finished with boiled linseed oil and wax, which of course would be compatible with beeswax or linseed oil as a plane sole lubricant. Higher-style and more expensive furniture was finished with a either a long-oil, a short-oil, or a spirit varnish, which are also compatible with linseed oil and/or wax. A "spirit varnish", by the way, is one that cures by evaporation of the carrier solvent - shellac, for example, is a spirit varnish. In the 18th century, spirit varnishes were almost exclusively materials that would dissolve in alcohol, such as sandarac or benzoin.

The lone exception would be a very inexpensive (and very poor) finish of pine gum dissolved in turpentine.

[george wilson]

I know your chemical background,David,but I simply did not have my planes stay oily. Yesterday evening I was at a gathering of Williamsburg craftsmen,and brought up what you had said about your planes.They were as surprised as I was to hear that you had had that problem.And,some of them worked in shops whose doors were always open in the hot Summer.

I know linseed can behave peculiarly. As an experiment,one of the cabinet makers left a gallon jar half full of raw linseed oil,with no lid,in an open upstairs window for many years.The surface oil dried into a thick film. Down deeper, it would seem to dry and thicken,then a year or 2 later,it would be less thick again,and seemed to go in cycles. Strange stuff. That bottle stayed there for about 10 years,but the oil was several inches deep in it.

Anyway,I never had oily surfaces on my planes,and am still wondering what could have happened to yours. Maybe the oil inside the wood could have stayed liquid,but the surface oil dried in 3 or 4 days.

About paints: I was talking to Mack Headley,the master cabinet maker,about what kind of paint he would recommend I put on some wig boxes I had made for the wig shop.He said they seemed to exclusively use oil based paints from their research.I always had been involved with varnishes as instrument maker,and had not used paint,so I asked his opinion. I was surprised to hear that they used oil based paints(at least on interior work),knowing English weather. Even in the 60's some English makers of guitars would wait till July to varnish their guitars.This was before air conditioning became common over there.

I spent so much time in the 70's researching varnishes,and duplicating old formulae,that the director was a bit on my case about it. Varnish is of course a very important part of violin making. Needless to say,many of the old formulae are completely bogus.

[Steve knight]

filling the plane with oil does nothing but make it a sticky mess. it does not stop moisture it does not dry and does not make the wood more stable.
I used to do this with the planes I made. I changed to thinned poly I used a vacuum chamber to speed it up. it never really did anything and the finish would never dry in the wood.
I would cut returned planes in half and the finish was still wet. the planes I used myself moved as much or as little as the planes that were not sealed.
this method only works if the wood is stabilized with plastic resins.

[Pam Niedermayer]

I wonder if the differences in behavior are due to the wood used. Perhaps beech vs oak vs whatever.

Pam

[David Keller NC]

Yeah, George - Funny thing about paints is that "milk paint" is often cited as an historically accurate finish. There's some evidence that extreme do-it-yourselfers (i.e., "poor") would use a casien base as a white wash, but almost all of the paint samples that I've ever read an analysis on were lead-based linseed oil paints. Certainly, the "Japan Colors" used to make milk paint in the modern era did not exist in the 18th century.

I don't think we'd want to use authentic recipes anyway - one of the strong reds from the 18th century was based on mercurial sulfide.

[george wilson]

I campaigned for some time to get the Book Binder's Shop,where my wife started working,to stop using mercury based red colors. I can't remember which mercury they were using,but they claimed it was not harmful. She used to come home with her fingers red,and she bit her nails. Finally,they stopped using the mercury.

Milk base paint was 19th.C..

[Jon van der Linden]

Yeah, George - Funny thing about paints is that "milk paint" is often cited as an historically accurate finish. There's some evidence that extreme do-it-yourselfers (i.e., "poor") would use a casien base as a white wash, but almost all of the paint samples that I've ever read an analysis on were lead-based linseed oil paints. Certainly, the "Japan Colors" used to make milk paint in the modern era did not exist in the 18th century.

I don't think we'd want to use authentic recipes anyway - one of the strong reds from the 18th century was based on mercurial sulfide.

In artists colours the lead you refer to was almost exclusivly lead white. Lead in other colours would generally be due to the admixture of lead white. Zinc and titanium which are commonly used today are relatively recent whites. I don't know about house paints or paints used by the "poor" which would have been 95%+ of the population.

What you mention about the linseed oil not drying is odd, not that it isn't dry on the inside, but that it isn't dry on the outside. As George mentioned, even a large bottle of oil, say a gallon, will develop a thick dried layer of oil in a relatively short time. (Artists do all kinds of crazy things with oil!) My first suspicion would be that it isn't a drying oil, or there is something unusual about the wood and its capacity to store and move liquid. I have seen old rifle stocks (about 100 years old) that were obviously oil impregnated, but they didn't ooze oil in the manner that you describe, or even show any liquid oil at all. (Yes, I was cutting into the stock at the request of a client - simply to alter it for his purposes.)

The idea that oil paint takes 100 years to dry is deceptive, drying really depends on the pigment. Earth pigments, the most traditional and readily available generally have strong drying properties. The slowest drying pigment that I know of is Alizarin Crimson, and it really wouldn't surprise me if that took far longer than 100 years to dry. As for the testing, I have to say I've never heard of anyone testing a painting to see if the paint was cured or not. Generally speaking paint is not analyzed for age, and craquelure is easily forged by someone that is capable, even on a painting done on a panel. Craquelure however tells absolutely nothing about age. Analyzing the precise composition of a paint can tell a lot about where it came from and how old it is, but that still isn't measuring age and has even less to do with the drying of oil.

I am really really curious about what is happening with your plane.

[george wilson]

I am also puzzled. It seems that no matter what the subject is,there are always contradictory opinions/experiences expressed. I know what worked for me,and still use the planes I treated thusly.

I am beginning to wonder how I was ever able to do the work I did!!!:)

[Steve knight]

I am also puzzled. It seems that no matter what the subject is,there are always contradictory opinions/experiences expressed. I know what worked for me,and still use the planes I treated thusly.

I am beginning to wonder how I was ever able to do the work I did!!!:)

what did the oil do for you? I mean did it make the planes stable? if they were not already stable I doubt they would have still been around. did it stop the planes from moving at all when they were moving before?
what did the oil really do?
experience and history has shown that soaking planes i oil does not do anything. I never noticed it doing anything in the 1000 or so planes I soaked compared to the ones I did not soak.

[David Keller NC]

"What you mention about the linseed oil not drying is odd, not that it isn't dry on the inside, but that it isn't dry on the outside. As George mentioned, even a large bottle of oil, say a gallon, will develop a thick dried layer of oil in a relatively short time."

While there's no doubt that boiled (i.e., with heavy metal salts - previously lead oxide, now mostly salts of cobalt) linseed oil will do this, raw linseed oil takes many years to polymerize in the presence of oxygen. It will eventually polymerize, of course, given enough time, but that might be very long indeed.

It is possible, by the way, to assess the age of linseed-oil paint based on the degree of oxidation. A test like that doesn't give one an absolute, because the degree of polymerization depends on the conditions that the paint was subjected to over time, but it's definitely an indicator. There are many other such indicators, such as the heterogeniety of the pigment particle size, the trace elements present in both the lead oxide base and the pigment itself, and the specific pigment used.

All of that can be fabricated, of course, but most conservators will tell you that it is extraordinarily difficult to fabricate every aspect of an old material (and generally too expensive to do so).

[David Keller NC]

I campaigned for some time to get the Book Binder's Shop,where my wife started working,to stop using mercury based red colors. I can't remember which mercury they were using,but they claimed it was not harmful. She used to come home with her fingers red,and she bit her nails. Finally,they stopped using the mercury.

Milk base paint was 19th.C..

Yikes! Claiming that any mercurial compound is "not harmful" is highly debateable. Some are more harmful than others based on their volatility and the means of exposure, but certainly ingesting any mercurial compound is something that would alarm a doctor.

I've seen references to recipes for casien-based paints that I seem to remember as 18th century, but I think you're quite right that commercial production and sale was a much later phenomenon.

[Jon van der Linden]

"What you mention about the linseed oil not drying is odd, not that it isn't dry on the inside, but that it isn't dry on the outside. As George mentioned, even a large bottle of oil, say a gallon, will develop a thick dried layer of oil in a relatively short time."

While there's no doubt that boiled (i.e., with heavy metal salts - previously lead oxide, now mostly salts of cobalt) linseed oil will do this, raw linseed oil takes many years to polymerize in the presence of oxygen. It will eventually polymerize, of course, given enough time, but that might be very long indeed.

It is possible, by the way, to assess the age of linseed-oil paint based on the degree of oxidation. A test like that doesn't give one an absolute, because the degree of polymerization depends on the conditions that the paint was subjected to over time, but it's definitely an indicator. There are many other such indicators, such as the heterogeniety of the pigment particle size, the trace elements present in both the lead oxide base and the pigment itself, and the specific pigment used.

All of that can be fabricated, of course, but most conservators will tell you that it is extraordinarily difficult to fabricate every aspect of an old material (and generally too expensive to do so).

Our experiences with oil seem to be completely opposite. Artists grade oil paint is made from raw linseed oil, and it will perform exactly as I described. Treated linseed oil (added metal driers, oxidized, cooked, exposed to sunlight, etc.) is only used for mediums, not for artists paint. Raw oil is used to make paint and can also be used to thin it within certain limits. There is no question that raw oil can form a skin in a realtively short period of time and thicken considerably - I usually keep about a quart of such oil on hand. We're not talking about decades.

I'm curious about the oxidation tests you mention. What kind of date range would it give in ideal circumstances? Once the oil is "dry" is it done oxidizing or does that continue indefinitely, i.e. is the date range finite? What about the addition of driers, resins, etc.? Would those have an effect on the results of the test? The reason I ask is because I'm always interested in learning more about paint.

The difficulty in obtaining pure pigments is the main reason that forgery can be detected through microscopy. For example, lapis lazuli pigment purchased today, no matter how pure, is almost certainly contaminated with other blues on a microscopic level. These, like you say, are indicators. Generally though paintings aren't looked at for authenticity in this way. Usually it's done to determine patterns of work of a period and more specifically of an artist or group of artists. It gives a window into the making of a painting that otherwise simply wouldn't be there. These patterns do serve as a guide for connoisseurs such as "The Rembrandt Project" where an attempt was made to determine once and for all which paintings were really by Rembrandt and which were merely contemporaries or studio works.

When it comes to creating the appearance of old works with the most modern pigments and mediums there is no difficulty at all. Many paintings in major museums have substantial damage that has been repainted in our lifetimes and look like they're fresh from the quattrocento. It isn't necessary to replicate old recipes. The whole "secrets of the masters" thing is simply a myth made up in the 19th century.

I'd still like to hear what George thinks about Steve Knight's experience with his oily mess. Has anyone done any tests about oil impregnated wood and wood movement? I suspect that different wood species will behave differently in this regard, just a hunch.

[george wilson]

I don't know what to think. I wasn't there to see exactly what other people used on their planes. It worked for me,is all I can say.

[David Keller NC]

Treated linseed oil (added metal driers, oxidized, cooked, exposed to sunlight, etc.) is only used for mediums, not for artists paint. Raw oil is used to make paint and can also be used to thin it within certain limits. There is no question that raw oil can form a skin in a realtively short period of time and thicken considerably - I usually keep about a quart of such oil on hand. We're not talking about decades.

I'm not sure what you mean by "paint" when discussing raw vs. BLO. From the historical sources that I've read (admittedly limited), a house or general purpose paint was prepared from linseed oil which was boiled with lead oxide II, the clear liquid strained, and crushed pigments added along with some additional white lead to form a reasonably viscous mixture. - Thery're a several late 18th and early 19th recipes and instructions for just such a mixture in the Shaker communitie's archives.

I know less about artist's oils, but the brief info I did dig up on it noted that they were almost exclusively prepared with crushed pigments and raw linseed oil, perhaps with a bit of white lead added as an opacity agent.