Warning for people using "easy wax finishes".

You can probably tell by the fact that I'm using varnishes or french polish that I don't care for the various wax finishes and long oil soft varnishes (waterlox comes to mind) that are sold to hand toolers to avoid what's really a wonderful experience - learning to finish things well and enhance the look of the wood.

But I've been makin some of my own finishes for a while - anything that's a solvent and carrier (like waxes) for a simple reason - you can make what you want, and for something like carnauba, you'll have $75 worth of wax for about 1/4th the price and then you can be foolish and free-using instead of stingy. Well, and you can avoid the constant changing of finishes.

When i started making varnishes again this year, and especially when making the hard varnishes that are literally multi-century finishes, a few people asked "why don't you use ___". Of course, some of this is solvent spray (don't want to), store bought varnishes (like waterlox - not remotely close to a copal varnish in any way other than that you don't have to make it, and expensive for what it is and often deceptively labeled depending on the product) and "hard oil waxes".

The last was a curiosity to me. if you make a carrier and a hard wax, it needs friction to really shine, and then it's a hard wax, but Steve V said "yeah, you can't really make what's in stuff like rubio" or other things of the like. that puzzled me a little bit - rather than magic, there's usually an easy explanation.

in the world of sort of scammy or "hiding it for a reason" stuff, rubio's A part is probably just oils and waxes. I would bet they found ways to cut corners with them, and I don't know what they are because the SDS reports nothing at all. Sometimes this means stuff really is non-toxic and other times it is "low VOC" because something that actually has tons of VOCs but used to be an intermediary chemical is unlisted. It may be the former. But how they got a liquid wax that spread easy and then was "hard" was a mystery.

Until today.

The Oil+2C product has a very simple and really obnoxious method - the second part is monomer isocyanate crosslinkers. I'm not a chemist (but I have access to a *really* good one). The isocyanate part for rubio is something that they cannot legally hide because it is highly sensitizing and toxic. It's like a bee sting - a little bit of it probably won't hurt you. repetition may bring you dermatitis, lung and eye irritation and reactivity to things other than isocyanates due to dysfunction. it is heavily controlled in the US occupationally and requires full body coverage, including face and eyes and head and exhaust away from people.

here's the rub. it works *really* well. in something like an oil or another polymer or polymerized finish, the crosslinkers probably break a bond in the polymer chains and then attach themselves and relink making longer and longer polymers. The action of being able to do this is not likely to be healthy - when they find their way into your body, what do you think they'll do?

In oil, what they'll definitely do is cause the oil polymer chains to be "crosslinked" resulting in longer chains. The longer the chain, the harder/tougher finish gets. bill T (the chemist who I badger often) put it along the lines of something like the difference between wax and nylon is the length of polymer chains. I may have butchered that and he'd point it out if I did, but you get the point - the wax doesn't have any length and isn't that hard and you can grab a piece of it and pull it apart. Nylon if solid would be both hard and tough. In rope, it obviously is very difficult to pull apart due to the polymer chains being intertwined.

Oils if around for eons (nobody will wait that long) will eventually become very dry and solvent and water resistant unless they are broken down by something else. The crosslinker sort of speeds you forward and improves the hardness and probably toughness of the oil finishes.

Be sure to look at the SDS of whatever finish you're using.

https://ardec.ca/media/catalog/docum...comp._A_EN.pdf
that's component A of rubio

https://ardec.ca/media/catalog/docum...comp._B_EN.pdf
that's component B.

nothing shown in component A, but B has two listed components. They both have the highest level of acute toxicity on an SDS - level 4.

28182-81-2

if you google the CAS number and add the word "health", you can find out why that is.
Substance Information - ECHA

Be careful what you're using, and especially if you're using a two part system, look up the SDS and google the components if they have to be mentioned.

I've never used any of these hard wax oils, because they seem like a solution that gives you a problem (inability to learn better finishes), but I would guess that you guys will tell me if you use one of these two part systems, the wax won't be very hard or durable if you only use the first component.

there are many other methods for crosslinkers, and some things as simple as metallic dryers in finishes (cobalt, manganese) may also do some of this, making finishes harder.

We're all responsible for our own health, and unfortunately, that also means if you're using solvent finishes and they say they're low VOC, what's replaced the VOCs may be even more unhealthful for you, and you may notice it if you're using the stuff only to go see that it's "lower VOC" and question your own experiences.

So - what of cooking varnish? Varnish isn't particularly unhealthful after it's cooked (I'm linking the stuff together in the cook, and it will continue to do more in the jar and more when it's finished), but the cooking itself is very unhealthful. I'm aware of it. Two non-toxic ingredients when cooked at high temperatures emit smoke that is definitely not good for me.

it'd be dandy if forums had become a store of knowledge and a reference for things like this, but they definitely have not as it's not really the premise. I get that, and am not lecturing.

an example from my past is spraying target WB. When I look at the crosslinker, they advertise that it's not an isocyanate crosslinker - it is an organosilane crosslinker when you read the SDS.

I don't know really what that means in terms of health - it looks less bad, but i can tell you for sure, if you take your respirator off for a second and get a whiff of it, you will cough.

it works, though, and this whole idea of getting finishes to crosslink without the health consequences is ongoing.

I would bet organosilanes aren't quite as effective as isocyanates, but the difference in health consequences is enough for me to know for sure that I can live with whatever comes up short if I have to spray WB finish.