Author Topic: Chocolate Varnish  (Read 13605 times)

Offline Stophel

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Re: Chocolate Varnish
« Reply #25 on: June 08, 2009, 02:56:58 AM »
I was the one with the black lights.  It does help...a LITTLE.  It is not sufficient to fully dry the stuff, though.  Sunlight is a MUST.  Even filtered sunlight through clouds is better than none at all.  The number one thing, though, is to apply it lightly.  No "flood and soak".   ;)  It took me a long time to comprehend just how little should be applied each coat.
When a reenactor says "They didn't write everything down"   what that really means is: "I'm too lazy to look for documentation."

Joe S

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Re: Chocolate Varnish
« Reply #26 on: June 09, 2009, 06:29:22 PM »
Billd – Here’s some data:  I’m finishing a stock using Kettenburg’s recipie for Brown Varnish.  The first coat got about an hour of sun, then it started snowing, so I took it inside.  This coat took three days to dry indoors.  The second coat dried nicely in 6-8 hours of sunlight.

Offline Mad Monk

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Re: Chocolate Varnish
« Reply #27 on: June 10, 2009, 01:57:47 AM »
I was the one with the black lights.  It does help...a LITTLE.  It is not sufficient to fully dry the stuff, though.  Sunlight is a MUST.  Even filtered sunlight through clouds is better than none at all.  The number one thing, though, is to apply it lightly.  No "flood and soak".   ;)  It took me a long time to comprehend just how little should be applied each coat.

To fill in on other posts in this thread.

The early oil cloth factories in England were set up in lofts where one wall was mainly windows.  UV light will speed up the polymerization of the boiled oil.  This is true for a well made oil.  A poorly made oil will often show little response to UV light exposure.
In the late 19th century the linoleum manufacturing plants started to install UV lights in the towers used to make linseed oil "crumb" which was then used in the linoleum.

Boiled linseed oil "drys, polymerizes actually, by adsorbing oxygen from the air in contact with the surface of the oil film.  Moving air over the surface insures a maximum amount of oxygen is available on the surface of the film.

Lead boiled oils are "through" drying.  Oxygen is adsorbed on the surface and transmitted down through the film at a uniform rate.  The oil film "drys" from the surface to the base of the film uniformly.

Manganese and cobalt dryers give a surface drying oil.  The oil films drys rapidly on the surface and then the drying procedds downwards towards the base of the film at a reduced rate.

In any case very thin films are desired relative to expected drying times.


E. Ogre

Offline Chuck Burrows

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Re: Chocolate Varnish
« Reply #28 on: June 10, 2009, 11:33:27 AM »
Quote
Moving air over the surface insures a maximum amount of oxygen is available on the surface of the film.
That explains why using a pair of fans sped things up for me this past winter and since.......thanks!
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.