super sticky BLO

[Roger Benton]

my "helper" wound up putting three coats of BLO on a smallish piece of walnut, the last coat must have been too thick, too soon, and not wiped off very well. it has been sticky for three weeks now and shows no signs of becoming manageable.

I have tried rubbing it out with 000 and 0000 steel wool and mineral spirits and that seemed to help a little but not much.

are there any tips or tricks for stripping/removing/fixing this mess?

[Prashun Patel]

Mineral spirits was my first thought.

How about a scraper?

[Howard Acheson]

Use a chemical paint stripper.

What is it you are trying to do? BLO is not a very good finish for any wood. It's best use is as colorant to "pop" the figure in the grain. It doesn't take three coats to do that.

[Henry Ambrose]

BLO pretty much never dries.

Put some on a piece of glass or metal and set it aside for a while to see what happens.

[Scott Holmes]

BLO will dry. sort of, it will look like dried up wrinkled gunk on a piece of glass...

Now the maketing guys for oil finishes and oil/varnish blends will tell you that it "goes deep into the wood and hardens the wood from with-in" Yeah right.