What is linseed oil paint?
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Well, it is paint made primarily of linseed oil with a bit of colour thrown in and boiled. In ye olden traditional days, when life was simpler, you could add traditional lead and the traditional paint lasted a very long traditional time. Today most linseed paint manufacturers trade on the environmentally friendly aspects of the paint (pure oil, natural pigments). However, in Scandinavia (where almost all the commercial linseed paint is produced) the growing market for linseed oil paints has prompted a few makers to throw in white spirit or other driers and thinners, as they try to break into the mainstream trade paint market. This is because linseed oil takes a very long time to dry.The pros & cons of other linseed paint
– it takes a long time to dry– it is expensive
– you probably can't talk a painter into using these paints
– there aren't many colours to choose from
+ it lasts a long long long time (see the section below "when does it need repainting")
And our linseed paint?
+ it dries very quickly+ it comes in any colour you choose
+ it can double as a clear varnish if you order paint with dry pigments
+ it lasts a long long long time but
– it is still very expensive and you probably still can't convince your painter to use it.
What makes our paint different (and so super)?
Our paint has a higher percentage of resin as the result of being heated treated beyond mere boiling. And to the linseed oil we add tung oil (to a recipe from south-eastern Asia). We didn't set out to create a traditional European paint, but one that worked, and, hopefully, was a 100% "natural" friend-of-the-earth paint. The linseed paint that we mix up (we don't claim to make paint) is not necessarily free of all man-made chemicals.
The linseed oil is pure, but we can't speak for the heat treated oils that come from Asia (although our suppliers say they are pure vegetable oils). The thinner/drier we add (and we add only tiny amounts, less than 2%) is natural turpentine from coniferous trees, but this means we are adding small amounts of volatile organic compounds, even if they are traditional. For what it is worth, although poisonous to drink, turpentine smells great, which suggests natural goodness (on purely anecdotal evidence, I get blinding headaches if working with white spirit solvents but am unaffected by turpentine). And the pigments?
The colour we add – and it wouldn't be paint without colour – is natural whenever possible. Natural pigments mean natural colours (and lightfast). The black is just carbon, the red is iron oxide, in other words, rust. The yellows and browns and reddish versions thereof all come from clay (traditional sienna, burnt umber, raw ochre, etcetera, etcetera).
This earthy range of colours is completely natural. Not so the blues and vivid red and most greens (or even the white? where does titanium come from?). But the pigments make up such a small portion of the paint, even the tree huggers should let themselves off with choosing an unnatural baby blue.Where we score over our competitors is that we offer a colour mixing service. It isn't backed by a computer-driven Dulux mixing machine, more like me with a measuring spoon and a large, filthy notebook. It is not exact science, but the range if colours offered far exceeds the home brands in any diy centres.
However, mixing pigments to achieve a desired colour and even the physical use of pigments as a colour source are frought with problems. Please go to our page devoted entirely to colours to find out more.
How do you apply the paint?
On new, raw wood, most recommend a first coat of pure linseed oil. The intention is to saturate the wood as much as possible with the oil, reducing its ability to absorb moisture and thus reducing fungal attack. Then comes a coat or two of paint, applied thinly, followed by a final coat of linseed oil. That's a lot of painting. And the time between each coat is anything from a day to a week.We have tried to reduce the need for so many coats of our paint. A coat of "thin" undercoat on raw wood, followed by two coats of "thick" paint produces great results. The final coat of paint (be it second or third if you are inclined to go mad with your finishing) can be thinned with linseed oil bought at any diy centre and most hardware shops. Boiled linseed oil dries faster, raw linseed oils is ultimately slightly tougher. This has the advantage of padding out your expensive paint and saving you money. But it also makes the final protective layer much stronger. Scandinavian researchers ascribe the occasional premature (within fifteen years) failure of modern linseed paint to the quantity and nature of their added pigments.
Most websites trying to sell you linseed oil paint quote 24 hours before recoating. The non-commercial sites sometimes say 4 days and one site says a week. We find that linseed oil on its own can take weeks (even months) to dry. Given that many Scandinavian academic reports on the viability of the industry underline the long drying time as the main reason why linseed oil paints are not suited to the modern building industry, the 24-hour claim by Swedish manufacturers seems overly optimistic. But let's face it, if repainting could begin exactly one day later, linseed oil paints would have no significant disadvantages over the traditional gloss oils that are overcoatable in 12 to 18 hours. When a day or two off is required between coats, it begins to get very complicated to organise a workforce and their timetable.
On a fine day, our own linseed oil paint really does dry in 24 hours if not 12. Indeed, it can be overpainted in 8.
When does the woodwork need repainting?
Apart from doing your bit for mother earth, linseed oil paints last longer than modern conventional paints. No, it's not a conspiracy. It just happens that synthetic resins, such as polyurethane, simply don't stand up to the pulverising power of ultraviolet light as well as vegetable resins. In Scotland, the conventional wisdom for architectural maintenance is that woodwork should be repainted with gloss "oil" paint every five years (not that many bother to). Conventional wisdom on linseed oil paint websites is that it lasts 15 years without further treatment. Moreover, it then only needs repainted with a coat of linseed oil, which costs very little. With our inclusion of tung oil, we are aiming for a quarter of a century, a lifespan quoted by some traditional Swedish builder/painters. But the success or failure of painted surfaces depends on many variables quite independent of the paint itself, primarily the surface taking the paint (raw wood, and what type of wood at that, old paint, linseed putty, silicone). We believe, without any proof, that around traditional sash windows, traditional linseed paint simply has to bind well with traditional linseed mastic and linseed putty, and surely lasts longer here than any other paint. But you cannot blame the paint when the mastic starts to separate from the window frame and lets in water. Like any other paint, linseed paints on north-east facing surfaces, out of the sun and rain, do better than paint on south-west facing surfaces.So, is it worth it?
The paint is expensive. The painting programme will take longer and is more drawn out than usual. That makes the labour expensive too. But once on, there is little and only inexpensive maintenance for the next three or four decades. By that time, the "maintenance free" uPVC windows next door will probably have been ripped out, plastic or metal parts having failed and being impossible to maintain. So yes, in the long term it is value for money. But it also offers things that can't be valued in monetary terms: a good environmental conscience, a sense of standing apart from the crowd, and an excellent talking point at your next dinner party.Who are we?
We are me, a cabinet maker cum architectural joiner based in Glasgow, with a PhD in archaeology. A love of the past and a passion for extending my range of unprofitable labour led me to try mixing my own linseed paints. To my wife's considerable surprise, the experiment was successful and the product looks financially viable. She'll be in charge soon.Ross Samson or Valerie Lyon
0141 632 8681 or 07985 046827