[Cob] finishing the floor review

[Bernhard Masterson]

Hi Tys,

I wouldn't recommend thinning the oil.  Earthen floors are so porous that linseed oil penetrates just fine on its own.  What you want instead is to just take a morning or afternoon and oil the heck out of the floor getting as much penetration as you can by reapplying oil as the floor soaks it up.  Beeswax is added to warm oil but only small amounts like 1/4 cup wax to 2 cups oil.  A little goes a LONG way.  Beeswax has the disadvantage of being slightly sticky and can cause furniture to stick to the floor and potentially pull up chunks when moved.  Look at Landarknw.com for some excellent floor oils, waxes, and numbers to calculate quantities.  Landark's products will give you harder and more durable floors and finishes than simple linseed oil and beeswax.

- Bernhard 



Get under a sustainable lifestyle umbrella, the carbon is going to hit the fan.

____________________________________http://bernhardmasterson.com

Natural building instruction and consultation

From: "Tys Sniffen" <tys at ideamountain.com>
Subject: [Cob] finishing the floor review
To: <coblist at deatech.com>
Message-ID: <003101cc31c5$39e4dc40$adae94c0$@com>
Content-Type: text/plain;	charset="us-ascii"
 
All,
 
 
 
Once again, going over material that has been talked about before, but just
to ask about my specific situation:
 
 
 
We're getting close to putting linseed oil on the floor (and, yes, I know
about being careful with it - rags do spontaneously combust!).  We've
decided to use a citrus thinner, instead of mineral spirits - bought this
product: http://www.realmilkpaint.com/citrus.html  I will let you know how
it turns out. 
 
 
 
My main question though is: when do we do the wax?  Do we melt it into the
final oil/thinner mix? Do it afterwards on top? And, does anyone have any
product recommendations? And amounts per  square foot? I love the idea of
just pure beeswax, but it seems like that could be really expensive to try
and cover our 900-ish sq ft floor.
 
 
 
You can see where we're at by visiting www.ideamountain.com for photos. 
 
 
 
Tys