Tru Oil or No?

[Jim Baker]

I tried to search the forum for posts on using tru oil but got no hits. I'd like to hear from anyone who's finished with tru oil and hear opinions as to it's viability as an instrument finish. Maybe a picture if possible.
My last build I used shellac and intended on french polishing. Turned out I couldn't make it work. Seems it relies on very specific solvent to make it work properly and I can't buy it here.
I'm not set up to spray laquer. I don't really want to use urethane.

Is tru oil really an option? I don't mind a lot of labour.

Thanks

[wwwilkie]

I had the same trouble when I moved to Canada, no denatured alcohol. I found 99% Isopropyl alcohol at my local pharmacy and it works great. Only takes a bit longer to dissolve the shellac flakes. Can't comment on Tru oil.

[Earl Gamage]

Tru oil yes. There is a long thread on this but it might be hard to find. Tru oil is easy to use and great looking for any woodworking.

[buddyellis]

Here's a few. One notable shop, Ellis Mandolins, I am pretty sure uses Tru Oil.

http://www.mandolincafe.com/forum/sh...eft-vs-Shellac
http://www.mandolincafe.com/forum/sh...l-amp-Sunburst
http://www.mandolincafe.com/forum/sh...ite-to-Tru-Oil
http://www.mandolincafe.com/forum/sh...n-stock-finish
http://www.mandolincafe.com/forum/sh...?33679-Tru-oil

[Jim Baker]

wwwilkie: Did you french polish with it?

EarlG: Can you get a shine with tru oil?

[wwwilkie]

Yes, once the shellac is dissolved it works beautifully. Just don't make the same mistake I did and mix it in a container with a metal lid. A chemical reaction occurs which prevents the shellac from drying.

[Earl Gamage]

I have never tried for a shine with tru oil. I have applied it and hand buffed to something a little shinier than a satin finish.

It does not take long to learn to make a nice finish with tru oil. Buy a small bottle in the Walmart sporting good section and give it a try.

Test on scraps or buy a piece to test on if you need to. Testing on finish is well worth the effort.

[Magnus Geijer]

I'm a big fan of tru-oil. Out of these, the brown, the red and the guitar were all done with nothing but tru-oil, and the white was topcoated with it. It's easy to work with, very forgiving and touch-uppable, decentely non-toxic and can be brought to a high shine. It also gives a slight golden glow, which is great on the reds and bursts, but also the reason why I didn't use it on the blue. I used it straight from the bottle, no thinner.

/Magnus

[RJinRI]

here's an IV kit completed in dec. 2005 with TruOil


My scratch #1 f style will also be finished with truoil ....someday....

[Tavy]

It's a little tedious to build up, but yes it's a good option, especially for the first build.

The only thing I would say, is that using shellac as a sanding sealer beneath the tru oil really helps (but isn't absolutely essential). You could buy a commercial ready mixed sanding sealer for this I guess.

Re disolving shellac - can you get "methylated spirits" over there? That's what we have to use here in the UK - it's a mix of methanol and ethanol I believe along with a blue dye and some pyridine to make it undrinkable (smells discusting too!). Seems to work OK, and there's no hint of the dye showing up in the finish (I guess it evaporates with the alcohol, but can't find any reference to what they actually use).

I'm attaching some images below - the waldzither was my first restoration and used Tru Oil, while the bowlback is my latest and was french polished using amber shellac and "meths" as solvent.

HTH, John.

[Rob Grant]

I also use methylated spirits or what we call "metho" (Oz speak) to dissolve my shellac. The stuff is suppose to be pretty toxic and can be absorbed through the skin. It's a good idea if you use metho to work in a well ventilated space and wear rubber gloves. It should be freely availiable at hardware stores and even supermarkets. In places where metho is used as an alcohol beverage replacement (very dangerous by the way), you may find its sale restricted.

[Jim Baker]

Thanks everyone. Very good information.

[Clement Barrera-Ng]

Luthier Dave Hynds uses Tru-Oil on a lot of his restoration projects, and he has a good instructional write-up here:

http://www.mandolinluthier.com/Hfinish-tru-oil.htm

[Paul Hostetter]

I had the same trouble when I moved to Canada, no denatured alcohol. I found 99% Isopropyl alcohol at my local pharmacy and it works great. Only takes a bit longer to dissolve the shellac flakes. Can't comment on Tru oil.

Shellac (French polish) thins with alcohol, and is quite unrelated to Tru-Oil, which thins with mineral spirits, turpentine, etc.

There have been numerous threads about which alcohol to use with shellac, and I would say that isopropyl is the least desirable of them: it's toxic, and contains way too much water. Methyl alcohol is also "denatured"—a weird word choice meaning it's ethyl alcohol that has been deliberately toxified to prevent people from drinking it. The health risks aren't worth it, for working with French polish or brushed shellac. What you need is ethyl alcohol, which is 190 proof (or better) drinkable alcohol. In some provinces, you can buy this in government Liquor Control Board stores under brands such as Everclear and bottled items sometimes called rectified spirits. Or get it through scientific labs. The 151 formulations are pretty watery. 190 is way better.





Tru-Oil is a nice oil varnish. You can build it and rub it out to a nice shine. Works best on non-porous woods, but can be made to work on almost anything. It was originally developed for gunstocks and the like.

[Jim Baker]

Thanks guys.

"SPRITUS REKTYFIKWANI" ???????

[ardbeg]

HI
Don't know if anyone else has mentioned it, but I have found that finishing with Micromesh before applying the Tru Oil really helps. Some would say it's laborious, but I actually enjoy it. There is a useful article from a woodworking magazine, that Lutherie Supplies here in the UK send out with Tru Oil, that gives a fairly detailed description of the process.
Cheers

[buddyellis]

Methyl alcohol is also "denatured"—a weird word choice meaning it's ethyl alcohol that has been deliberately toxified to prevent people from drinking it.

I used to think so, too, but 'denatured' alcohols are usually not even much ETHYL alcohol. Here is MSDS for a common 'Denatured' Alcohol that is available (Lowes Home Improvement, for example). I use this stuff (or I guess, at this point USED to use it as I have a whole gallon of it that I'm probably not going to touch again without gloves):

CONTAINS: 65-75% METHANOL (67-56-1)[200-659-6],
20-30% ETHANOL (64-17-5)[200-578-6],
< 10% ISOPROPANOL (67-63-0)[200-661-7],
< 10% METHYL ISOBUTYL KETONE (108-10-1)[203-550-1]


Highly HIGHLY recommend the above suggestion by Paul to use Everclear or some other neutral grain spirit. I can't believe I've been bathing my hands in this #### doing FP for several years. I assumed it was mostly Ethanol, but its not anything of the sort.

[HoGo]

Thanks guys.

"SPRITUS REKTYFIKWANI" ???????

That's "rectified spirits" in Polish language. I guess that's the best one for French Polish, especially when smuggled from Poland via French airlines

BTW, formulations of denatured alcohol may vary greatly. I used to use denatured alcohol that contained 80+% ethanol and the rest was methanol or MEK with isopropanol. Two years ago they changed formulation to something like 60% ethanol and rest was s**t so I switched to pharmacy supplied "spiritus cum benzino" which is 95+% ethanol with touch of benzene (or is it naphtha?) to make it undrinkable. I live in Europe so you probably won't find similar products but you can ask around. Pure ethanol is also available from lab supplies but expensive as hell.

[Paul Hostetter]

My French luthier friends buy 10 liter tins of pure ethanol for around 15 euros. California only allows 151 proof ethanol, so I have to buy mine in Oregon. It's even cheaper in Mexico, but I'm in Oregon fairly often, or its emissaries come here, and I'm never in Mexico.

Still, there's this:



I once refinished a wooden chest with Watco by actually wet sanding using the Watco as the liquid. What that meant was that the resulting "dust" became a slurry which filled the pores as I wet-sanded. It really worked nicely.

Every once in awhile some fashion victim wants the finish removed from their mandolin neck, and I've used that same wet-sanding technique with Tru-Oil, and it's also worked really well. Watco and Tru-Oil aren't that different, actually. Tru-Oil smells a lot nicer though.

[Tavy]

I used to think so, too, but 'denatured' alcohols are usually not even much ETHYL alcohol. Here is MSDS for a common 'Denatured' Alcohol that is available (Lowes Home Improvement, for example). I use this stuff (or I guess, at this point USED to use it as I have a whole gallon of it that I'm probably not going to touch again without gloves):

CONTAINS: 65-75% METHANOL (67-56-1)[200-659-6],
20-30% ETHANOL (64-17-5)[200-578-6],
< 10% ISOPROPANOL (67-63-0)[200-661-7],
< 10% METHYL ISOBUTYL KETONE (108-10-1)[203-550-1]


Highly HIGHLY recommend the above suggestion by Paul to use Everclear or some other neutral grain spirit. I can't believe I've been bathing my hands in this #### doing FP for several years. I assumed it was mostly Ethanol, but its not anything of the sort.

I wouldn't worry too much about getting that on your hands - you certainly wouldn't want to make a habit of drink it (blindness, insanity and death, usually in that order!) - but as an ex lab chemist we used to throw most solvents (though not all) around with impunity - generally speaking methanol is the least of your worries in a workshop full of power tools!

That said, I have invested in a crazy large pack of disposable gloves, mainly to reduce clearing up time - I got fed up with 10 minute FP sessions that took longer that that to clear up from afterwards!

Cheers, John.

[David Newton]

Love how this tru-oil thread has turned into an alcohol thread.

The best advice I picked up, about finishing with Tru-oil, which I used on a couple of mandolins, but have gravitated to shellac, is this: gloss of the final Tru-oil finish is determined by how smooth the wood surface is, in other words, work down to the finest grit possible. I "burnished" the wood surface with 0000 steel wool to get a good gloss with tru-oil.

[big smiley guy]

I haven't used Tru Oil in a while but the last time I did I seem to recall that I used shellac as a sealer coat then burnished it back with 0000 steel wool. Then for the first few coats I used thinned Tru Oil and almost as a spit coat, french polish. Then I was able to build up coats afterwards using unthinned Tru Oil. I was finishing on a walnut solidbody bass and I went with the shellac because when I tested the Tru on the walnut it really raised the grain quite a bit.

As for alcohol many woodworking stores will sell denatured alcohol that is specifically made for french polishers that doens't have some of the additives found in the Lowes/Home Depot stuff.

[Jim Baker]

O.k., let's see if I remember all the tips: Sand very smooth, use a sealer, and keep a bottle of everclear near by just in case.

But seriously, thanks everyone for sharing. There's lots of good information here. I think I'll do this one in tru oil. Perhaps it's most important to seal the spruce so that it doesn't soak up much oil. The maple should be o.k. I'd think. Should likely seal the walnut too.

[Magnus Geijer]

Sanded to 800 grit, stain on raw wood, no sealer.

/Magnus

[Magnus Geijer]

And sanded to 320 grit, stain on raw wood, no sealer.

I should mention that I've taken a piece of spruce and a piece of maple and cut them apart after finishing with truoil, and there's no visible indication of the finish penetrating into the wood. Also, these two are probably the best sounding mandoilns I've built.

/Magnus