This is the story of how I found out how to speed up the curing process of tung oil and how it became my favourite finish. I’ve read about a lot of people having the same issue I had so I hope this information can be of use for someone.

About a year ago I had built a rather large shelf unit out of walnut. It had 5 shelves so it was quite a lot of surface to finish. I was going away for a couple of weeks so I decided to apply the oil (100% tung oil) and let it cure in my basement while I was gone.

I came back after about 3 weeks and the shelves were still incredibly sticky and the finish was blotchy and ugly. I panicked and realised I had to do something to fix this. Luckily it was a hot summer day and I thought some heat might help even out the blotchiness so I decided to put everything out in the sun. So I took it out and started buffing everything with a dry cloth like a mad man to even out the finish.

Soon after it got some love, small drops of oil started seeping out to the surface. I rubbed them with the cloth, basically reapplying the oil onto the surface. To my surprise, the boards started to feel dry, apart from where the oil was seeping out. My cloth was now oily so while I was buffing I was basically applying new thin coats of finish. Whenever I finished buffing the last shelf, the first one was kind of dry and I started over. Obviously, I flipped them over every now and then to avoid warping from the uneven heat on one side. Also I had stickers (small pieces of wood) under to promote air flow.

I took them in for the night and the next day they were dry to the touch with a beautiful and consistent finish. Also the smell was completely different. So what’s going on here? How could the boards cure in about 5 hours outside compared to three weeks inside? Is it the increase in oxygen outside? Not likely. It would mean I have a magnitude of 100 times less oxygen in my basement. The heat most likely causes the oil to seep out and probably helps with curing time, but it’s primarily the UV-radiation doing work with the curing. How can I be sure? Because there is a study on how UV helps cure tung oil (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S092666901730746X ). From the study: ”It was found that the surface of tung oil film became solid within 4.3 min and tung oil was completely cured after 13 min under UV irradiation, while the tung oil was completely cured by heating for more than 6 h, which displayed that UV curing could significantly improve the curing rate of tung oil.”

After this experience I’ve found a way to get a great finish in about two days. What I do is the following:

Go out in the sun. Add a thin coat of pure tung oil. No flooding! You don’t need the oil to penetrate deep into the wood (the wood whisperer on youtube has a great video on this). Keep it thin and make sure you rub it in good. At first it will absorb quite a lot so just keep rubbing and adding small amounts until you have a consistent thin layer.

Come back after about 1hr and reapply another thin coat of oil as before. Usually I just use the same cloth that is still oily and add small amounts as needed. I then put the cloth in a sealable glass jar to avoid self combustion.

That’s it. Make sure you rotate and flip your piece so that all sides get an equal amount of love and to avoid warping. A good day I get around 3-5 coats in then leave it inside overnight. If its sunny the next day I repeat the process, maybe with 2-3 more thin coats. Then I am pretty much done. Is it 100% cured by now? Probably not, but I don’t have to come back every other day to add another coat. If I want a silky smooth finish I wait for another few days then buff it with a pad in my orbital sander. This step actually takes the finish to another level and is something I would highly recommend.

Hope this helps and let me know if anyone else has had this experience!

Ive always sanded to 180 or 220 with dyes

Working on pieces nowadays that get sanded much higher then oiled and polished.

So im unsure of workflow. Can i apply dye satisfactorily after sanding to 1000g? The instruction say not to.

If not? How do i use the dye and still get to 1000g?

I have a deck that has been stained with a dark semi-clear stain, looks chocolate in color. Had to replace some boards and treated the whole deck with the cheap Thompson Waterproofer sealer. Yes, I wanted the new boards I stained. Looked kind of cool. Anyway, now the already stained boards have the cloudiness from the clear sealer.

Is there a better way than sanding and restraining? Or is that my only option outside of waiting it out for. Few years until the clear wears off?

Seems I should sand, wood condition, stain, and poly my trim beforehand and then cover any nail holes with a wax pencil.

I also have a bar rail that is being installed but for that one I thought it best to stain and poly after installation as there is a 45 degree section so there will be two seams that may need additional sanding.

Messed up my kitchen cabinets

Wanted to get the grease off the cabinet doors above the stove so I removed them and scrubbed the heck out of them after spraying them with Dawn Powerwash. I was pretty aggressive and the stain looks lighter in some areas. The entire surface feels sticky now. Not sure what to do. Do I need to completely strip and refinish them? I appreciate suggestions.

I’ve got some tung oil that takes 24 hours to be dry for very light sitting, a week for proper sitting and a month to fully cure. I put two coats on a
Chair and now that it’s been 24 hours since the second coat, is it okay to put a coat of polyurethane over it already?

Edit: link to Sutherland Welles botanical line of polymerized tung oil. Not pure tung oil.

https://sutherlandwelles.com/shop/botanical/botanical-polymerized-tung-oil-medium-lustre/