Any problem useing vegetable oil

[David L]

Using dressed recycled pine I made a box to store my metal working files and finished it with two liberal coats of Sunflower oil and a coat of UB Traditional Wax.
It came up a beautiful honey colour with and a great patina.
SO is there any problems useing vegetable oil as a finish?

People use all sorts of manafactured oils eg Danish Oil so why not use natural oil?
Could it be used on a deck at $1.00 a litre it's cheap enough even if it needs a couple of extra coats

Perhaps Neil would like to comment on this.

[Buzza]

I've found vegetable oil (cheap blended) seems to stay tacky for far too long.

[dadpad]

I would have thought vegetable oils would go rancid due to bacterial breakdown. encoraging mould etc to form.

I was under the impression wood finishing oils were mineral based. parrafin and that kind of thing.

I prolly should shut up and listen rather than ratteling on. I might actually learn something here

[TassieKiwi]

Don't . Some nitwit years ago told me to use olive oil on a knifeblock. Went all gooey and smelly, and softened the top layer of wood.

Use it to fry up some taters, and stick to boiled linseed, danish, scandanavian, china, peruvian anteater, whatever.....

[Big Shed]

The issue is not so much whether you use vegetable oil, after all linseed oil is a vegetable oil, but which vegetable oil, ie drying or non-drying. Raw Linseed Oil is non-drying, Pale Boiled Linseed Oil (PBLO) is drying.

Have a read of this article:

http://www.woodturningvideosplus.com/oil-finish.html

There used be a very good article by the same guy, I think, on the Arbortech website, but it seems to have disappeared.

[David L]

Thanks for the link Big Shed I will read it later. So far the surface is not tacky, following the lead of a Bloke I spoke to at a market years ago I did a couple of toys and so far they are fine.

[soundman]

Consider this
We are talking about edible vegitable oil.
By definition it is an organic and digestable substance....... therefore..... unless it goes thru some process of transformation such as polymerisation or it contains inhibiting substances....... it can be digested...... fed upon .... by various microbes.
It might be all fine & beaut now but conbine some time, moisture, exposure to contamination and...... whala........ wooden petri dish.

As you will find discussed elsewhere here at ..................length, some plant derived oils have usefull properties.

cheers

[ubeaut]

Linseed oil, tung oil are vegetable oils that dry boiled linseed and pale boiled oil have a dryer in them (used to be metallic) All of these will skin and harden over time. Most other vegetable oils will act the same as Soundman has said above.

Paraffin oil is a non drying oil that is safe for use on all food items etc it is completely inert and will not go rancid etc.

It is entirely possible that the Traditional Wax is stopping the oul from going rotten, it is also entirely possible that it will still go off some time in the future.

Most vegetable oils offer little or no protection for the timber. You would be much better off just using the wax by itself.

Cheers- Neil

[David L]

Thank you all for your comments point taken.

[gristleburger]

just a quick note to add to many of the other useful ones here. i had finished a lovely paduk inlay - on cherry cutting or breadboard as a gift for a friend. i had coated it with vegetable oil. i put it aside for several weeks and then got ready to ship it- and found some lovely green funk starting up a colony in two areas of the board.

that's a big no on the vegetable oil from here on in for me.