Millie’s All Purpose Penetrating Tung Oil

Has anyone ever used Millie’s All Purpose Penetrating Tung Oil?

I came across the product while looking at the Serious Tool website. There was a long testimonial from a bowl turner on the site as well.

Never used it and never heard of it until reading your post. But wow! $43 a quart? At that price I'll never try it, easily twice the price of other brands.

Millie's is one part of the Sutherland Welles line made here in VT. It is a low lustre wiping varnish made with tung oil, wax and citrus solvent. I like the products, particularly Hard Oil which is a blend of tung oil and polyurethane resin. They are expensive, but are relatively non-toxic and give a good result. You can call up and get application advice directly from the people who make and sell it.

I recently picked up a bottle of tung oil from Woodcraft (their brand).

Its quite thick and a bit gooey. Do you all dilute? If so, with what?

True Tung oil is expensive.
Which is why people buy "Tung Oil Finish", which is usually a blend of things, infact they are allowed to have almost no Tung Oil in the "finish", if, in the opinion of the maker, it produces a finish like pure Tung Oil.
The only way to know sometimes is read the documents on the finish.

I usually mix 100% Tung oil with DNA in a 50/50 mix. Although I know a number of people that use the citrus based solvent.

Woodcraft's Woodriver is supposed to be 100% Tung oil

Reading the documentation on Millie's it appears to be a mix of Tung oil, citrus based solvents and beeswax. In fact it appears it's about 70% solvent and the rest Tung oil and wax.

A little bottle of true tung oil goes a long way. I was always taught to thin it one part to 4 parts mineral oil or turpentine. An old boating recipe and works fine on bowls. This speeds the hardening as well.