THE WORKERS

Linseed Oil A Cautionary Tale

Linseed oil can create a beautiful finish on fine furniture and metal work. Its an easily renewable finish, a natural product in some of its forms. I use it to refresh my wood counters and the finish on some of my earlier oil finished pieces in my home. The counter you see above is now in the once a year for the rest of your life phase of the finish process, is used hard daily and looks terrific with little care. That little pile of rags in the foreground though could completely wipe out my house or yours if you werent paying attention. Tragically, it happened to a friend/client a few weeks ago. They came by yesterday and now that they have seen that some of their furniture will be coming back, I think its ok to publish this cautionary tale. Wikipedia says: Linseed oil is extracted from ripe flax seeds by cold pressing. It has natural characteristics that make it an excellent product to produce a beautiful and durable finish on wood products. It does, however, have a potential downside as Wikipedia points out in the second sentence of the description .... Linseed oil can polymerize and the reaction is exothermic, and rags soaked in it can ignite spontaneously. True enough. Only the prompt and professional response of the Dorset Fire Department and other mutual aid companies prevented the building from being a total loss. So, I now have, in the upstairs of my garage, a large selection of smoke damaged furniture and we are currently working through the cleaning and polishing of some of the pieces. Its a sobering but rewarding process. DISPOSE OF YOUR RAGS PROPERLY !!!

The library before. We built the table back in 2004 ...

The table after the fire ... It was covered with papers and since the room didnt actually burn, the papers protected the finish somewhat. There are still ghosts of the objects that were on the table left and we are probably going to strip the top and refinish it. The base is fine and looks great now.

One of the chairs below had been in for a tune up in March ... They are truly amazing pieces ..

One of these we fixed up back in March ...

This is a before picture from my previous blog post ...They are pretty toasted now but I think theyll be OK if were careful and lucky.

This piece was one of the furthest in the house from the start of the fire in the garage, but it was still pretty heavily smoke damaged .... The smoke gets into every crack and crevice ...

But we got it. Shellac and Butchers Wax are your friends after its clean .. The chair in the foreground is from the library and it got slightly overcleaned as the original finish had black at the intersections of the spindles, legs and seats and until we looked closely at the photos of the library before the fire we couldnt understand why we couldnt get that smoke off. Well continue to work on the pieces ... There are several important ones yet to go .... When we have a definitive cleaning process, Ill post it here ... Weve got , obviously, a couple things that work, but were still refining our techniques.
Dispose of oily rags properly is an understatement. Do not operate heavy equipment under the influence of drugs or alcohol .... same deal ... Be careful ....