Anyone know how to make oldshool varnish?

I bought it, 37 bucks. I’m not anti-amazon, but I do try to give other shops a shot first.

hkapstein

in General Discussion 4 years and 2 months ago

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hkapstein | 4 years and 3 months ago

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The stuff that you might find on victorian woodwork or furniture. Is it a short oil rosin blend? Is there wax in it? Anyone try this and how did it come out?

Augustiner | 4 years and 3 months ago

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maybe lead is what makes it extra beautiful 🙂
Abbott paint and Varnish is a pro shop at 157 50th St and has a huge selection of varnishes and I always found them helpful.

andriywww1990 | 4 years and 3 months ago

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Charlie who used to work at Abbot on Eagle knew how. we talked about it and he once borrowed a book on finishing products from me, a book published by Blehan in the 1930’s and he took it home and read it cover to cover. and we talked about it. they canned Charlie for cheaper help and the new guy KNOWS NOTHING and i do not see a lot of motivation to learn anything. i was asking him if a toner was lacquer based and he took the can and read it (i read lables; if it said, i would not have asked) and said “i think so”. i get it home, it was not. Charlie never would have let me walk out of the store with something that he was not certain about. he would have known or he would have expended a few calories by moving his fingers across the counter to the push buttons on the phone and called the manufacturer (and he has done that, right when i stood there). the new guy is LAZY (in the order of people who wear orange aprons- i think they scalped him from home depot) and that is part of the problem in the country now – everybody wants to do a job but they do not w ant to learn it, read, or ask, especially if it means learning at home, at night, with no immediate compensation. i no longer shop at abbot. if i offered to loan the new guy the book i loaned to charlie, he would toss it someplace and go home at night and pick his nose as he watched some low brain tv show.

so to make varnish. Tung Oil. Japan Drier and Turpentine. off the top of my head i do not know the formulations but someplace here i have a book . my guess is like this, 45% tung, 45% turps, 10% drier. maybe less drier (48/48/4). Drier will darken it. also, there is a chemical that can replace drier. might be cobalt but that blues things, right? i forget. this is off the top of my head.

when i was a kid, i made some varnish screwing around with a book case i had made. I used linseed oil cut with turpentine and some drier AFTER my mother told me it would darken. i did not want dark. it darkened the wood. Lesson here: listen to our moms or learn from my mistakes. at the time i did not know about tung oil.

years ago, varnish and paint manufacturing was done by the person doing the varnishing or painting. they did not buy the product at a store. the painter relied on his product being the best so they did not share the formulas and dared not write them down outside of their own journals. it is very hard to find period information.

i am busy today. the book i have was published in the 19th century. tonight i will see if i can find it and get the formula. Blehans books might have it but they in the period as we moved toward modern.

hkapstein | 4 years and 3 months ago

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Awesome, I think it might be an interesting project, would love to hear what your book has to say. Probably back in the 90s there were still a few folks around who could do it, but now I doubt you could find anyone. Your off the cuff recipe for varnish is missing a resin. Here’s what I’m thinking may work. Heat raw linseed oil on a hotplate, disolve rosin, and then add a drier when it’s time to apply it. Boiled linseed oil might work, but contains toxic metals.

andriywww1990 | 4 years and 3 months ago

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and by the way urban, notice i don’t seem to know the formulations? notice i said i did this a long time ago, i did it a few times up until i was about 25 years old (so more than 25 years ago). let me tell you why: i did this on my own projects i was making for myself. i would not trust something like this on someone’s entry door. i stopped making my own varnish long before i began working on projects for pay. i did it like you might now, for myself. even more myself now, i would just by something commercially made.

stevecym | 4 years and 3 months ago

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There was no resin in old school. It was oil, turps, drier. The resin part is probably what makes modern varnishes different than the old ones and the resin is probably some sort of plastic.

Keep in mind, plastics were first made in the 1860s and came into modern use in the 1930’s. (Yes. I took plastics class in high school). This is why i will not rely on a book written after 1930, say. My guess is that plastics hit the finish industry in full swing in the 1950s. The plastic often used in varnish is urethane but i am not sure about that in exterior. I might look at some msds.

stevecym | 4 years and 3 months ago

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Dont use linseed. Use tung.

stevecym | 4 years and 3 months ago

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You can use linseed but between that and the drier it will darken. And it does not darken nicly. I use linseed on wood all the time, but if you try to build a heavy coat, like varnish, that is when it darkens. That project i mention above from my youth, i think i recall my mother saying it will turn black. It kind of did and the more i think about this now, i wonder how she knew.

stevecym | 4 years and 3 months ago

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I have a book here that says calophony is the resin BUT this book lists all sorts of things that seem like they can supplant each other and is not wrtten for someone making it but as a history to what had been used spanning continents and centuries. The other book was written in a specific time and place and i dont recall resin. I am trying to get to it.

andriywww1990 | 4 years and 3 months ago

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This is a modern book with a historic perpective and they list resins. Shellac, linseed oil, and paint by s. Shepherd.

andriywww1990 | 4 years and 3 months ago

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When you find a gum or resin, let us know what kind. And where you got it.

NeoGrec | 4 years and 3 months ago

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I don’t have a recipe for making varnish at home but here’s a reading recommendation: THE FURNITURE DOCTOR by George Grotz (Crown, $19.00, pbk). Not only is it packed full of great tips for anyone trying to repair or refinish furniture — or any interior woodwork — it’s also funny as hell. It was originally written in the 1960s, then updated in the 80s, and it’s full of laugh-out-loud anecdotes and thrifty, home-spun wisdom. Corny as all get out but truly a great read.

markwalker | 4 years and 3 months ago

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It would either be SHELLAC, which was laboriously applied in many layers to give a beautiful deep soft sheen like lacquer, or a natural varnish. For oil paintings two kinds of varnish are available: DAMMAR VARNISH which is close to colorless, and COPAL VARNISH, the latter being a beautiful amber varnish. I used it to refinish a table. It won’t wear as well as modern varnishes but it looked great.
Unfortunately NY Central Artist Supply and Canal Paint, where you might find the materials for doityourself, are closed. I have not searched online for it buy why not give it a try.

hkapstein | 4 years and 3 months ago

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Thanks, I know about shellac, but I doubt that’s what’s on most of the 1870-1930 woodwork in brownstones, tell me if I’m wrong, I could be. I think it’s an oil resin varnish like the Copal you mentioned, but copal is relatively expensive, and I feel like that probably wasn’t used all over the place on wainscoating etc. It could be a pine resin or rosin product, or mastic based varnish. If I find some time when I’m done with my door painting, I may try to mix some up. You can get pine resin or rosin online, it’s not to bad, but mixing up a lot of varnish might be complicated in a house.

andriywww1990 | 4 years and 3 months ago

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i think you are right urban about what they used in brownstones. i think it was a wax. or a wax over a dried oil (not an oil like what you want to make but a straight oil or an oil diluted and applied). while shellac was big in the period you mention, i think it really hit interiors here with the oak that we see in the post 1900 houses.

andriywww1990 | 4 years and 3 months ago

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urban, you need to get that book i mention above. that is a recent publication and i bought it probably on amazon not that long ago. the author speaks whoawhoawhoa’s language.

hkapstein | 4 years and 3 months ago

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What’s the book called?

andriywww1990 | 4 years and 3 months ago

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i mention it in a reply above.

brett.dayman | 4 years and 2 months ago

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Good article on this topic https://www.nytimes.com/1996/10/13/nyregion/working-with-traditional-oil-varnishes.html