“I am building a bar top from 8/4 Walnut for my son’s new home, and he wants to have a very natural finish on it – no film finish allowed. My first thought was to use BLO, but some research has led me to think that Pure Tung Oil might provide better protection. Is Pure Tung Oil a better option than BLO for an open grained wood like Walnut?”

Tung Oil and BLO

When it comes to protection, boiled linseed oil (BLO) and pure tung oil are pretty similar. One important thing they have in common is that neither one offers a great deal of protection. If you have to choose between the two, I would say to go for the BLO since its cheaper. BLO does is said to “yellow” a little more over time when compared to tung oil, but that is a moot point with respect to walnut.

Now obviously your son is the boss here, right? But indulge me while I make a small suggestion. An pure oil finish will certainly be better than nothing at all, but for a bartop, your son might regret this decision after the first few spills. I can totally understand why he doesn’t want a film finish though. Personally, I hate the look of those super thick bartop finishes (epoxy). If someone wants that much protection, they should just put down a piece of glass or simply use something other than wood (can you smell the contempt? hehe). But keep in mind this isn’t an all or none proposition and you can achieve a compromise between the highly protective plastic look and the barely protected natural look.

The Oil/Varnish Compromise

So my suggestion would be to try to achieve the best of both worlds. Give the bar top a very natural-looking finish, while imparting a great deal more protection than what you would receive from an oil alone. There are a few products on the market today that contain oil and varnish together, like Watco Danish Oil. Because there is so much oil in the mix, you would have to put on about 4 or 5 coats before you really start to get an appreciable film. However, if you apply 2-3 coats, the wood will retain the natural look while protecting the surface with at least some varnish. If you go with a matte or satin formulas, I think your son will be even happier with the end result as it won’t have the eye-glaring reflective qualities of a typical gloss concoction.

One of the great advantages to using an oil/varnish blend is you can monitor the surface after each coat and simply stop when you have the look you want. Dilute the mix with mineral spirits if you want even more fine control. Also keep in mind that you can actually make your own oil/varnish blend by mixing 1/3 mineral spirits, 1/3 BLO (or tung oil), and 1/3 polyurethane.

Either way, make sure you sand lightly between coats to keep the finish nice and smooth. After the final coat, either sand with 1200 grit paper or buff with 0000 steel wool. The wood will not only look natural, but will easily repel the occasional spill.

Related Resources:

Oil Finish Basics (Video)
Make Your Own Oil/Varnish Blend

A few months ago, I woke up one morning, poured my coffee, and was incredibly disappointed to see that my cutting board exploded! OK so maybe it wasn’t all that violent but it was cupped like crazy and had a very large split. Upon further inspection, I noticed a bit of trapped water in the center of the underside of the board. Now the thing to remember about end grain cutting boards is that even after finishing, they will still soak up moisture like a sponge. So standing water is your cutting board’s Kryptonite!

What Happened?

So how does the split actually occur? Well let’s think about what happened. The water soaked into the center of the board and as a result, the center “squares” swelled and expanded. Because the moisture was in the center only, the wood in the outer perimeter did not expand. So something had to give. The resulting crack is really nothing more than pressure relief. Think of it like surrounding a piece of solid wood in a frame. Eventually, the joints in the outer frame will open up if the board in the middle expands.

The Epoxy Fix:

The first step in repairing this disaster simply involves waiting. After a few weeks, the board flattened out and the crack closed up almost completely. But the gap was still big enough that I wanted to use a gap-filling glue, so epoxy did the trick. Now I know what you are thinking. Is epoxy food-safe? While I have heard that food grade FDA-approved epoxies do exist, I have never seen them. And I can definitely say that the West System Epoxy I use is not FDA-approved. So why would I use this on my cutting board? Generally speaking, its the same logic I subscribe to when discussing the safety of film finishes. That is, once cured, the product is inert. In other words, its not chemically reactive and its not actively leaching chemicals under normal room temperature conditions. Furthermore, the crack represents such a small area that actual food contact would be absolutely minimal. Now while I am not prepared to tell you epoxy is completely food-safe, I will say that I consider cured epoxy safe enough to use on a small crack on MY cutting board. Ultimately, the final decision is yours.

Want to make an end-grain cutting board like this? Check this out!

I am working on a set of cabinet doors with mitered corners and I am wondering what you have found to be the best clamps? I am not having much luck with the glue process using a set of cheap corner clamps that I picked up praying that they would work. I am new to wood working and have not put together a collection of good clamps but I have no problem spending the money to get anything that works like they are supposed to. I hope you have time to respond it would be very much appreciated.

P.S. I love your web site and it has been very helpful and entertaining.

And this was my response:

Hey Trent. I have never been a fan of those dedicated corner clamps. I just never get good results. For me, I get the best results doing a two part process. First off, I like to use a biscuit, dowel, or domino at each joint whenever possible. This helps keep the pieces from moving vertically during the glueup and takes a lot of the stress out of the equation. Not to mention it makes the mitered joint stronger. After adding glue, I use a band clamp to pull everything together. This is the one I use is made by Bessey (pictured left).

Once the frame is secure, I put the whole assembly on a set of clamps. I place two in one direction and two in the other direction, keeping them as close to the corners as possible. Using clamping pressure, I can then tweak the fit so that everything is lined up perfectly. Sometimes I use an additional clamp vertically on the joints themselves to make sure the pieces are sitting flush with one another (a nice alternative to using biscuits as I mentioned previously).

If you can, try to use a slower setting glue like Titebond Extend or 30 minute epoxy for this. The joint will be stronger and you’ll have plenty of working time. Most times its the fact that we’re rushing that makes miter glueups so difficult. Hope that helps. Good luck.

This series is now available on DVD! Order your copy today!

This series is now available on DVD! Order your copy today!