Does anyone on this board use Linseed Oil to seal cue shafts?
Linseed oil
- Thread starter 8Ball48043
- Start date
I tried it years ago as well as tung oil. It turns the shaft dark and is sticky. When I was a kid I used to clean my cue shaft with lemon oil and I liked it but would not do it now. I think if anything just some wax is all you need or nothing at all. Butchers wax burnished into the wood works. My fear of oils from what I have read is you don't want to bring the dry wood back to life it can warp on you, it is better in it's dry state.
linseed oil is a traditional finish on ash snooker cues. i use it on the snooker cues i have...it does darken and can give a yellowish tint to the wood. it can also take forever to dry....i use a polymerized linseed oil which dries much faster. when dry though, it is very nice and slick. it has to be pure linseed, the stuff they sell as 'boiled' linseed oil has metal driers and stuff in it, which will make the shaft sticky. i don't think the protection is that good though, doesn't seal against moisture that well, but it is a tradition in the snooker world which has continued to this day
I have used this in place of Tung oil on a snooker cue I refinished.
Wipe it on, polish a bit and wipe off excess. Polish well.
I don't see why it wouldn't work well on a shaft as it is a neutral type of finish. I cleaned the scratches out of the plastic Dufferin logo dot with it.
http://www.drwoodwell.com/elixir.htm
You don't need much and I can see where the small bottle might last you almost forever.
See that Paul Dayton is a furniture refinisher, he might be able to shed some light on this product.
Wipe it on, polish a bit and wipe off excess. Polish well.
I don't see why it wouldn't work well on a shaft as it is a neutral type of finish. I cleaned the scratches out of the plastic Dufferin logo dot with it.
http://www.drwoodwell.com/elixir.htm
You don't need much and I can see where the small bottle might last you almost forever.
See that Paul Dayton is a furniture refinisher, he might be able to shed some light on this product.
Linseed oil was used until as a furniture finish on utilitarian items until shellac came along around 1800. It survived for the next century when combined with beeswax and turpentine as a "polish" for old furniture and was still recommended for that purpose through the 1950's. Today it is on the forbidden list of products to use on furniture as it penetrates the wood a little, continues to darken until if is almost black and it offers very little if any protection against anything.
It's primary use for years was as a component in oil based paints. It is almost obsolete as modern water based paints are so good but it isn't totally gone.
Tung oil is a lot better than linseed oil but I wouldn't put either of them on a shaft. The tung oil isn't hard enough and the linseed oil will slowly get dark.
Snooker cues are different.
It's primary use for years was as a component in oil based paints. It is almost obsolete as modern water based paints are so good but it isn't totally gone.
Tung oil is a lot better than linseed oil but I wouldn't put either of them on a shaft. The tung oil isn't hard enough and the linseed oil will slowly get dark.
Snooker cues are different.
Why is that? Because they are usually made of Ash? Is there really a significant difference between Ash and Maple? Thanks for your contribution.
Snooker cues traditionally are finished dark and they darken more with age. It is how they have always been and how they are expected to be. To me thay always look like they need a good cleaning even though they are as they are expected to be. A pool cue with wood that looked like snooker cues would be viewed as in terrible shape and would be hard or impossible to sell.
The sugar maple tree is native to north America, is plentiful, and its wood is perfect for shafts so we use it. The British have used ash for centuries. Both woods are fine. I've made a few shafts out of ash as a trial and my conclusion was that there wasn't all that much difference as long as the weight was similar. Since straight grained maple was far more available, there wasn't really any reason to change. These two woods are so much alike that wooden baseball bats are made from either wood though ash is more traditional.
The sugar maple tree is native to north America, is plentiful, and its wood is perfect for shafts so we use it. The British have used ash for centuries. Both woods are fine. I've made a few shafts out of ash as a trial and my conclusion was that there wasn't all that much difference as long as the weight was similar. Since straight grained maple was far more available, there wasn't really any reason to change. These two woods are so much alike that wooden baseball bats are made from either wood though ash is more traditional.
i have tried linseed oil on a maple pool shaft and while it ends up feeling much the same as on an ash shaft, i can confirm it looks pretty damn ugly as paul says. especially on the snow white maple shafts that are common today. the oil makes it a nice urine yellowish color, which then gets darker with time. perhaps on darker colored maple it would look fine as it does on the darker ash shafts.