What is Best: Finishing a Wooden Hand Plane?

[yvan]

I have just finished cleaning a Mosley & Son wooden plane and I am ready to finish it.

I was thinking about using a 50:50 mix of tung oil/natural turps rubbed in with steel wool.
Then a 75:25 mix followed by 100% tung oil final coat. Or should I apply a coat of shellac first followed by something else?

I consulted Prof Google but didn't seem to find anything specific.

All advice & suggestions will be gratefully received!


Cheers,
Yvan

[Bushmiller]

Yvan

I am anticipating you will get a million replies to this question, but I am reluctant to exaggerate.

Tung oil is used as the base oil for many preparations. Used by itself it relies on a build up of material that will gradually improve the lustre. I would be inclined to use a very dilute coat initially to fill the grain and soak into your freshly sanded timber. Depending on how much time you wish to spend, you might even give a second coat, but each time wipe off surplus remaining after a few minutes. After that you could apply full strength oil, but I would still not use steel wool to rub it in yet. You can use a scourer as an alternative (kitchen type, but available in different grades according to colour as far as I can see) and this has the advantage of not leaving steel particles embedded in the wood.

After your full strength coats of oil have been applied you can use steel wool or a scourer lubricated with more of the same oil. The steel wool is the smoothing aspect and at this stage the oil is merely the lubricant. It should leave a super silky finish. If you wish you could buff the plane either by hand or with an electric buffer. I use a cheap $20 auto style buffer that leaves my hands tingling for ten minutes after it is switched off!

Although the project in the pic below was done using matt varnish and then oil, but it follows the same principle.

P1070136 (Medium).JPG

Regards
Paul