You don't want any linseed oil left on the surface of the wood. It does not dry hard. It will solidify, but it will always remain rather soft. It is an "in the wood" finish. For an "on the wood" finish, a varnish is required.
It's not entirely necessary to have truly boiled oil. Raw oil will dry, but it does take longer. You do need to start with a GOOD quality cold pressed, preferably purified linseed oil. The better grade the oil, the better it will work.
A quick, easy way to get a decent oil finish is to go to
www.woodcraft.com and get some Tried and True "varnish oil". This is a good quality oil that is made into "stand oil" (basically, it is put into glass covered trays in the sun to thicken it some) and it has some rosin added. There's not much rosin in it, and it still doesn't dry real hard. It could stand to have more resins added to make a good surface varnish. Will work well as a regular oil finish. Do what the directions say. Apply in THIN coats. Set it in the sun to dry each coat for a day, or two, or three...
I am kind of returning to the use of boiled oil for finish. I just made myself up some oil. Took almost a quart of oil, added a teaspoon of lead carbonate, a teaspoon of burnt umber (the manganese in the umber is supposed to be a good drying catalyst, as is the lead carbonate), and boiled it in my little deep fryer thingy for about an hour and a half (at most). You just want a low boil. It does not have to be really rolling. In fact, you don't want it to get too violent. Keep the lid on the pot (it CAN catch fire...even with a closed element and no open flame. Believe me, so keep the lid handy, along with a fire extinguisher, and do this out in the backyard well away from anything you don't want to burn down...and NEVER hold your head over the pot and look directly into it. The fumes aren't too pleasant anyway, but you definitely don't want to happen to be over top of the pot and suddenly 4 foot flames begin to leap up out of the pot! Oh, and do NOT add turpentine to the boiling oil. Turpentine has a low flash point, and those 4 foot flames will become an 8 foot flamethrower. Again, believe me, I know). The resultant stuff is THICK. Thicker than honey. You can thin it with turpentine and rub it into the wood. It will dry really quickly. Several hours in the sun. What I need to do is make up some oil and leave it thin. Boil it for a half hour or less, which will keep it a nice, light consistency, and it will penetrate deeper.
"stripping this stock again".... you sound like me. In my finishing experiments I have had to strip off a lot of varnish and redo a stock. I use Strypeze (which I think has the MEK in it...). Zip Strip is about the same thing.
To get dried linseed oil off the surface, you cut it off with burlap. Scrub off the oil with the burlap using a shoe shine motion across the grain. In fact, to do a good oil finish, this is what you're supposed to do. When you get the grain close to filled, put on a coat and let the excess stand on the surface and let it dry (or get nearly dry), then cut it off the surface, leaving the grain filled. Now, if it's varnish and has resins in it, you can't really do this, as it's too hard.
