BLO...How Long to Wait?

[joseph j shields]

I'm finishing a small wine cabinet and need some advice. The piece is quarter sawn maple with sepele door inserts. Both woods have really nice grain & figure, but my standard wipe-on finish I use (1/3 blo, 1/3 mineral spirits & 1/3 poly), didn't really "POP" the figure in the wood, plus the maple got too dark & yellow and reduced the contrast between the maple & sapele.

I'm thinking about putting down a light coat of boiled linseed oil.... followed by a few coats of shellac.

A couple of questions...

#1. Should I dilute the blo with mineral spirits??? If yes what ratio?

#2. How long should I wait before putting on the shellac??

#3. Any other tips???

I'm under a time crunch, so I can't wait too long :(

Thanks for your help!


-jj

[Bill Arnold]

JJ,

For most of my projects, I use a similar finishing system; although I usually use a 2/2/1 ratio of BLO/Naphtha/Poly for the first couple of coats. Naphtha flashes off quicker than MS. When I've topcoated the initial coats with poly, I wait at least a week, if not two, for the BLO to cure. I honestly do not know if you can topcoat quicker with shellac, but my assumption is the BLO still has to have time to cure regardless of the topcoat.

Regards,

[Jerry Olexa]

IMHO, use straight BLO, Wait approx 1 week for BLO to thoroughly dry (when you can no longer smell it) before applying shellac. G'Luck...

[Doug Shepard]

You might want to substitute Tung oil instead of the BLO on some scraps to compare them. I suspect what darkened your maple up was the BLO and probably not the poly. Tung would probably lessen that effect. Most of the time BLO doesn't have a big darkening effect on maple, but I have had the odd board or two go that way - to the point that they almost looked like cherry.