Our products

Linseed oil paint (thick) dries gloss
  £30 per litre, and thus more expensive than champagne.

Linseed oil paint (thin) dries gloss
  £18.50 per litre.
Flat oil paint (for use indoors)
  not available at the moment
Turpentine (the real pine tree thing)
  £5 litre

How does it arrive?

You can have your paint pre-mixed and bottled. This is how it will come in 1 litre quantities. The disadvantage is that, stir as you might, there will always be a large amount of pigment sludge left at the bottom.
In larger quantities, you can have the linseed oil base separate from the pigments, which is usually shipped dry. The pigments should be treated as if the colours on the top are potentially quite different from those at the bottom of the bottle. In other words, stir well. Once added to the linseed oil base, an enormous amount of stirring will be required to even out the colour.

Why is linseed oil paint so expensive?

Damned if I know, is my immediate answer, because linseed oil is really quite cheap (check out the price of 500ml bottles in an ironmongers). From Swedish and Finnish competitors, you will find linseed paints selling from £25 to £44 per litre (which makes our paints cheaper). Possibly the high price is related to the high cost of living in Scandinavia. Nothing from Lappland's neighbours is going to be cheap. Our paint is extremely expensive because we are more interested in tougher, longer-lasting, quicker-drying paint than on pure eco-credentials (if we are over 95% green, that's enough for us). So our paint base includes tung oil, which is easily four times more expensive than linseed oil, and the extra heat treatment adds to the cost.
Another reason our paint is expensive is that it is made by two men and a dog in an old shed (or is that two old men in a new shed?). In other words, we make no major savings by bulk purchasing and nothing is automated. We do everything in slow motion and this intensive labour adds to the cost of the paint. On the plus side, it means that we can try to match the colour of your choice without it becoming prohibitively expensive.

Choosing a colour

Standard colours. Our standard range are the cheapest and will be the quickest to produce. A hand-painted card costs £8.00. The standard colours as best matched on our colour monitor as we are able. In real life, the colour you will see will certainly be slightly different.
Even our standard coloured paints are only mixed when an order is received, so there will always be a delay of a few days. Our supply of oils are also a bit erratic, which can slow us down too.
Bespoke colours. Theoretically most colours are possible, except white. Because of the yellowness of linseed oil, the whitest white is cream coloured. In practice, natural colours are easier to produce and easier to match and cheaper. Colours requiring blue will be hardest to match and most expensive. To order a bespoke colour, send a sample of the colour you want or email its pantone number. (Click above on "colours" and you can see about a thousand Pantone colours.) We will send you a hand-painted sample to let you see the colour we propose. You could return this and suggest it be darker, lighter, more yellow, etc, and the process would be repeated. Producing each sample of bespoke colour costs £15.00 and may take a few weeks. The details of your paint recipe will be kept in a big paint-bespeckled notebook should you wish to reorder in the future.

Ordering

To order, please email us or phone (07985 046827) for a chat. We accept cash, cheque, and credit card payments but aren't so computer friendly that we have computerised ordering systems.

Postage and packing

Whatever it costs us.

Using our (non-shellac) products

Shaken or stirred, it doesn't matter, but mix it up. The pigment sinks to the bottom of all the paints and the vegetable resins sink to the bottom of our flat oil paint. Once opened the stored "thick" linseed paint will form a skin over the top rather readily if there is plenty of air above it in the container. An old trick is to store the tin upside down, the film thus forms on the bottom. But sure as fate, the top won't be on properly if you do.
Paint with a brush.

A supercheap B&Q genuine bristle brush is all we use. To the left are two such brushes (and a honey jar) we have used for years, although for shellac not paint. Interestingly, after years of use the bristles have taken on the slightly conical shape of new shellac brushes. No special technique is required (neatly, sloppily, whatever comes naturally), but paint with the grain when possible. The paint and oil tends to settle and thus scarcely leaves brush strokes. Clean spills and brush with white spirits or turpentine. Two coats will certainly be required. The "thin" linseed oil paint has been devised specifically to reduce the cost of the second coat. It has the disadvantage of a much longer drying time (measured in days not hours). It also seems to be attractive to small flying insects, who believe it to be edible. It is thus best applied when warm and sunny and not in Scotland during midge season. For outdoors we suggest three coats (see home page for more).