Brushable clear finish?

[Joel OF]

Is anyone aware of a self hardening colourless (or as colourless as possible) finish that can be applied by brush and does not require heat (from the forge or oven) to make it set?

I'm ruling out vegetable oil and the like because they require heat, I want something that can be done 'cold' at room temperature. It would be a finish for indoor items so it doesn't have to be completely weatherproof. I don't want something that will chip or look shiney, I expect I'm after something water based that has a bit of flex and is runny enough to get into all the little nooks and crannies, e.g inbetween rams horns on the top of their heads. I'm preferably looking for a single pack product that won't go off in a tub because I've added a hardening agent, something that I can brush on then leave, I don't want something that needs to have excess residue buffed off. Doesn't have to be food safe. I don't want to use any spray products for a variety of reasons.

This can be an off-the-shelf product or something I can cook up at home, but the usual beeswax - turps - linseed oil mix is not what I'm after.

Reading that back it sounds a bit grumpy, I don't mean it to, I'm just trying to be clear and concise about what I'm looking for. Cheers in advance!

[fergy]

Try the bottle opener thread 

[ianinsa]

Not asking for much are you?,  seriously though I've used clear acrylic in the past. You should be able to get small tins in your local B&Q , sort of like colorless PVA. Often used to protect acrylic paint effects but without the price of scumbleglaze. Available in both matt and gloss . Both Plascon and Dulux have good ones.  

Another product that has really good handling resistance and good UV résistance is yatchspar varnish and clear QD , if you then use small quantities thinned with D300 winch kills the gloss and the 'varnished look' . Wear rubber gloves and apply with a sponge. This is especially good for protecting gold leaf and/or Baroque paste.(toss the unused & diluted product) 

 

Ps. When applying gold leaf to external wrought iron ala Buckingham Palace Gates or outdoor furniture, use marine varnish as a size not the regular Acrylic size.

[Alan Evans]

Cannings Ercalene S is what I used to use for domestic stuff like fire tools that had an armour bright finish. Pickled and rotary wire brush burnished. It is a cellulose based finish and even though the S version is the heavier body it is almost invisible. I would then give it a wipe with Rennaissance wax as belt and braces.

Incredibly fast drying being nitro-cellulose. I would hang the (untouched by human hand) freshly burnished pieces on wires and then flow the Ercalene downwards keeping a wet edge all around.

Alan

[Joel OF]

Thanks folks. That process and product sounds exactly like what I'm after, Alan. I'm fed up with dirty, waxy, sticky residues on my work I battle to wipe off so I've recently started pickleing some of my work in vinegar then burnishing it on a bench grinder wire wheel, but I'm thinking of investing in a blast cabinet to make the process dry & less messy.

[Alan Evans]

The blaster is good. But for forged work you need chilled steel shot to rip off the scale, and that leaves a dull surface. If you use aluminium oxide or glass bead, both of which leave a very nice soft sheen finish, you will be there for days. Chilled steel shot and then burnish with a wire brush on a polishing spindle gives a fairly rapid and efficient armour bright.

If sticky wax is a problem, you really should try the Reannaissance wax. Which has an above room temperature sticky melting point. It is virtually invisible, has a bit of creep to repair any scrapes, and does not go dirty through dust sticking to it. You can buy it on eBay for the price of an arm and a leg. Or....look up the thread on here where I listed the recipe and source of the microcrystalline and polythene waxes and the recipe to make your own at a few per cent of the retail cost.

You will probably find as I did that you can do away with the lacquer, and just use the wax.

Alan

[1forgeur]

Tung oil, in a satin finish?

[Joel OF]

2 hours ago, Alan Evans said:

If sticky wax is a problem, you really should try the Reannaissance wax. Which has an above room temperature sticky melting point. It is virtually invisible, has a bit of creep to repair any scrapes, and does not go dirty through dust sticking to it. You can buy it on eBay for the price of an arm and a leg. Or....look up the thread on here where I listed the recipe and source of the microcrystalline and polythene waxes and the recipe to make your own at a few per cent of the retail cost.

You will probably find as I did that you can do away with the lacquer, and just use the wax.

Cheers, I'll look up your old post. I tried picking up a pot last time I was in the Fire and Iron gallery but Lucy said they had just sold out! I'd pretty much already come to the conclusion myself but the recent articles on finishing in the BABA mag cemented it for me that I need to put more time into a high quality finish...then up my prices accordingly. Off the back of reading about Peter Parkinson's pickeling then graphite based finish I picked up some Liberon "Iron Paste" to have an experiment with, but haven't got round to it.

Would R'ance wax be easy to work into the fullered folds in my cheese cutters? That's the sort of P.I.T.A area I get annoyed with at the minute. The only way I can get my beeswax/turps/linseed mix into folds like that is by poking/scrubbing with a toothbrush which inevitably gets clogged up, goes stiff, and becomes useless. (Before anyone says they should have a food safe oil finish, I have spoken to the Food Standards Authority about food finishes and it's only the areas that touch food that need to be "food safe". That's 316 stainless wire, so ner ner nee ner ner).

2 hours ago, 1forgeur said:

Tung oil, in a satin finish?

Does that last okay on metal? I had a look at a tin of it recently and it seemed to be a wood finish.

[Alan Evans]

One of the advantages of mixing up your own wax is you can double or treble the quantity of white spirit which enables it to flow into tight spaces. You can always add a lot more white sprit to a pot of retail Rennaissance. The same applies to zeebrite the grate black paste (which I think has been renamed). I always squoze the tube into a honey jar and filled that up with white spirit, then it goes on with a paintbrush rapidly rather than dabbing it on with a cloth which takes forever.

[Joel OF]

Great stuff. I've tried thinning my beeswax mix in the past by adding more turps but in a matter of days the turps sinks & separates leaving the beeswax to firm up at the top, which is really frustrating!

I've located your recipe so I'll Delia Smith a pot of that up. Through Googleing the ingredients I've come across a company called Kerax that do a lot of waxes & have the required waxes listed on their site. With any luck they can point me towards a food safe wax I can apply cold as I'm bored of baking vegetable oil into my food items.

Cheers again.

[Arceye Blue]

I use:-

 1 part volume bees wax ,1 part vol turps ,1/2 part vol  boiled linseed oil.

have no problem with hardening or separation .

I even re-waxed my dog walking wax coat with it

 

[Alan Evans]

The supplier I used was Poth Hille.

They had a minimum invoice amount so I eventually got wise and asked how much wax I could have for the £35 minimum…it was a sackful. Still got most of it left after twenty years!

Alan

[Charlotte]

There is a floor wax sold as Clear Acrylic floor wax,( I forget the name) which I used to use for small indoor item.  Just drip and let dry.  These days I use automotive clear coat spray  

[anvil]

A great paint on cold finish is 50/50 linseed oil and turps with a healthy pour of Japan dryer.

By the time you finish applying this to say a 10'section of railing,it's dry and ready for another coat.

I usually apply 3 coats.

it does not crack or flake.  

you can apply a paste wax over it.

inside it lasts forever. Outside it needs maintained. 

 

[Frosty]

For your situation I've used floor polish. The modern stuff is water based and very low viscosity so it fills all the nooks and crannies through capilarity and dries hard. That's hard enough to take heavy foot traffic and is available in gloss or mat. I haven't bought any in some time but "Mop And Glow" comes to mind as a product name.

I'm a little surprised Charlotte is the only other person to suggest modern floor polish, it's near perfect for indoor finishes. It's water based and non-toxic so you can rinse the brush out at the sink. No, it's not a food grade finish, not THAT perfect I guess.

Frosty The Lucky.

[Nobody Special]

Does it have to be brushed? I get good results with spray on clear lacquer. Found right next to the spray paint. Makes a nice gloss, gets in hard to reach places. Only negatives I've seen is that sprayed too close you can get air bubbles, and sometimes towards the end of the can, sometimes the paint gets a white sheen to it.

Mop and glow used to be one of the favorite cheats for boot shining when we still had the black combat boots. It was darn near indestructible, except that eventually the leather dried out and would crack the finish.