Flax
Did you ever think there are things where noone can beat you? Where you will never fail? Where you exactly know what you are doing? I doubt that you are right, as I learned my lesson these days.
I have lots of experience in doing furniture finishings using linseed oil. If you do it right, you get silk-mat surfaces which resist most of the common conditions. It even resists many solvents and thus is superior to nitro lacquers. The only thing I know that it won’t resist is green tea with lemon juice :) .
From time to time, however, you might want to refresh the surface. That’s not a big deal at all. Use a solvent to remove dust and dirt from the surface. Then use a fine-grained sanding paper of a grit size of at least P180, better P220, and gently sand the existing finish. Remove the dust.
Mix linseed oil with turpentine in a ratio of 1:1. Apply the mixture with a brush. Wait for about half an hour. Then use a lint-free cloth to remove the rest of the material from the surface. Only a wee small film may remain (and take care about the cloth, as the oil in it made it pyrophoric; dry it outside or burn it in the fireplace).
This time something went wrong. The oil only dried partly. Other parts remained wet and further parts became sticky. Really a precarious situation.
I had, however, very good luck. I decided to use turpentine in the hope it will solve and remove the applied oil (and I was pretty sure it would not work). It was a painful job, but luckily (and surprisingly) I got almost all of the oil removed. The rest will hopefully dry as expected.
Frankly, I have no clue what went wrong. Maybe the linseed oil I used was too old. It resided in the cellar for several years now, so chances are given it got a cold or something like this. I will get some new tomorrow and try my luck again.
