I have a new pine countertop that I'd like to match some existing pine kitchen surfaces nearby. The previous owners of my house finished the existing counters with raw linseed oil, so I decided to follow this process for the new pine surface — even though it is not a food surface, I decided a matching look would be nice.
I mixed 2 parts raw linseed oil to 1 part mineral turpentine, a ratio I found somewhere online that appeared convincing. As the previous owners did on the existing counters, I added a touch of stain to darken the colour just a bit.
I applied 3 thin coats of this mixture with a paint brush, allowing ~10 hours between applications, waiting for the surface to be dry to the touch.
Now, some 10 days and quite a lot of fan-blowing time later, the new counter is still very … oily. It's dry to the touch, but leaves an oily residue on my fingers. A brown residue can be rubbed off on paper, and any paper left sitting on the counter blots up tell-tale oil.
The air has been relatively dry, and temperatures have been around 10 to 20ºC (50 to 70ºF). Edit: humidity in the 50 to 80% range, top stored indoors.
How should I proceed to get the surface to 'set'? Is it just a matter of more time and more air, or should I be wiping the surface down with something to get rid of the remaining oil?
Thanks!
Best Answer
Raw linseed oil does not harden. That is the fundamental difference between raw and boiled (often chemically treated rather than actually boiled, these days) linseed oil. It will be gummy for a very, very long time.
You would probably want to remove as much of the surface oil as possible and re-oil with a hardening oil - boiled linseed, walnut, etc.