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I recently bought an wooden outdoor setting of seats and a table and was recommended to oil it with linseed mixed with 40% turpentine for the 1st coat and 20% for the second. Even now, six weeks later, the surface is very tacky and the seats and table unusable. Is there a way to salvage this? I have no idea what the wood is except that I know it is not pine.
Any help for a complete beginner would be gratefully received.
It sounds like you may not have removed excess oil from the surface after application - the usual practice with oils is to buff off the surface to remove excess after about a half hour or so - that'll stop you ending up with a with a gluggy semi-dried oil layer on top of the timber - which is what it sounds like you have.
Oil is an 'in the timber' not 'on the timber' finish; I'd give it a rub down with a rag wet with turpentine to see if that will shift the sticky oil off the surface...if that is slow/not working, I'd upgrade to either steel wool or a scotchbrite pad with paint thinner (enamel thinner for spraypainting), and after that I'd be looking at paint stripper and a pressure washer.
Once clean, you can re-oil, but remember to buff the off the excess oil with a rag after about a half-hour. Using a boiled oil rather than a natural linseed will also help speed up drying time
Safety notes - if using thinners, do it outside, and wear gloves. Nitrile gloves stand up to thinners better. Rags with oil on them can self-combust if wadded up and chucked in the bin, so spread them out flat to dry before throwing away.
Not sure but it seems you may have used raw linseed oil which has no driers instead of boiled linseed oil. It's an easy mistake to make.
Agree with everything Master Splinter says. If you have used RLO it is recoverable.Just want to add that Diggers who make the stuff have a good PDF fact sheet on linseed oil on their web site. It is well worth a read and perhaps a book mark.
Jerry
Everyone is entitled to my opinion