Today I am going to show you how to do a 100%
pure tung oil finish the right way.
So the first thing you are going to do is
you are going to dilute the first coat.
To make sure this tung oil doesn't go bad,
just squeeze the air bubbles out.
Like this guy right here we don't want him
in there.
So I'm going to let him come out.
There he is!
And bam!
I'm going to dilute it, you can use mineral
spirits, I'm using turpentine because I'm
hardcore like that I guess, right now anyway,
that's what I have.
And you dilute it 1:1, and you can eyeball
it, it's ok, you can eyeball it.
Boom, that's about it.
I can tell you right now, just for what I
am using this for right now tonight, that's
way too much.
Stir it up so it's not milky, it will mix
together pretty good, and now it's just a
thin tung oil.
Now I know a lot of people want to use pure
tung oil, first coat really needs to be thinned,
if you don't want to use turpentine or mineral
spirits, and you are really trying to be as
green as possible, you should use something
like pure orange oil, or something like that.
I'll put links in the description.
Anyway...and now you are just going to need
a rag and paper towels.
For my first coat, you just put it on heavy
and rub it into the surface, it soaks right
into the wood like everyone talks about.
Yeah, of course, the wood is all dried out.
And so you just work this into the wood and
I am going to do it to the whole piece real
quick.
Thinning out the first coat will make sure
you get deeper into the wood and if you don't,
I have done both, but I just want that added
protection of thinning it out first.
And I end up doing three whole coats.
This is a really dense wood this is purple
heart wood.
This guy is super dense and if you started
the first coat without thinning it, good luck
getting into this grain cause this guy...I
guess you could treat it as a one and done,
(laughs)without diluting it, but it
wouldn't get very deep into the wood.
Parts of the grain are soaking up tung oil
faster than other parts, so what you want
to do is you want to come back around, just
rub a little more on, and then give it a minute,
basically while you are working on this, to
soak in.
So I am going to leave that one alone while
I work on this other guy, and that will give
me just enough time to let it all soak in
in there, and we can get this guy done.
And now we are going to let this guy sit here
for a little bit, I have them both covered
really well.
So they are soaking up the oil.
The grain is taking it all in.
There is some real nice figure that's popping
right now.
I will have to show it to you.
I'm done with this, I'm going to cap this
off, now this I am not planning on keeping
long term, this jar, so I'm not going to disperse
the air, with marbles or anything like that.
Now I am just wiping off all the excess oil.
See it's all oily, and I am wiping that all
off completely.
You can see some of the figure right here.
Curly.
I wasn't trying to get curly purpleheart,
but a lot of it comes that way.
Huge, monstrous trees.
So I am just going to wipe down the face of
it and the side of it one last time real quick
before I leave it alone.
One last quick wipe down..ok, now I am going
to leave it alone for an hour.
Then we'll come back.
It is an hour later, and now I'm going to
add more tung oil to the diluted tung oil
without making too big of a mess.
Going to close it up the same way as before.
Now it's still diluted, but it's going to
be thicker now.
Ok, one more hour.
On the last coat, new cloth, pure tung oil,
undiluted.
This stuff is like a thick syrup going on
now.
It is the next day, and you can see some places,
this is the only spot I really found where
it looks wet, like it pushed the oil out,
what will happen is it will sweat some of
the oil out.
So what you are going to do is just wipe it
off with a paper towel.
Then if you do this, you are set, now you
just got to let it cure, but that's it.
That's all there is to it.
This is what they look like after a week of
curing, they are dry now, there isn't any
wet spots, it's not sweating tung oil anymore,
and they are ready for art.
And that's the way I do a pure tung oil finish.
