plasticpigeon
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- Birmingham
I have been experiemnting with woodgraining. I want to wood grain my kitchen fire surround (it would have surrounded a range originally, and what it there is now a total fiction made up by me) to make it look like oak or some dark wood. I thought I would try a mix of polurethane varnish, white spirit and various natural earth powders for the glaze, and I have found raw umber to be a good colour at the moment. However the thinned varnish was drying far tyoo fast and I needed something with more "open" time. I read about whether it is possible to mix linseed oil with varnish and apparently people use this kind of mix for "wiping varnish". Last night a tried a roughly 50:50 mix of boiled linseed oil and polyurethane varnish and added a small amount of driers for good luck and tried again. Though the result wasn't acceptable that was down to my lack of skill and not the glaze drying too quickly so I wiped it off and I shall try ahgain tonight. I also painted a plastic yoghurt pot with the glaze to see if it would dry at all, and this morning it has pretty much gone off! I tried this mix as I have a few Victorian books with paint recipes and they are pretty much completely based on linseed oil, driers, turpentine and pigment, often using lead white as a base. I hear a lot of people talk about how linseed paint takes ages to dry or polymerise and I wondered why not just add a bit of driers to reduce the open time. Or indeed could a varnish be made from boiled linseed and driers? When I look at the plethora of oils and finishes available these days I wonder whether most of them are just nonsense.