The best finish for
Water-Based Finishes: These finishes offer excellent durability and protection for walnut. They have fast drying times, low odors, and easy cleanup. 3. Wax Finishes: Wax finishes provide a natural-looking finish without adding much gloss or shine to the wood.
The three main players on the market are Odie's Oil, Osmo, and my personal choice, Rubio Monocoat. Unlike film finishes, hard-wax oils provide protection by penetrating and binding to the top most wood fibres on the live edge slab and then a seal layer of wax cures on the surface.
Paraffin wax, available in the canning section of your grocery store, is a great sealer for end grain cutting boards. While boiled linseed oil will cure to a solid, it would take many applications and a lot of drying time to seal the end grain enough to keep food juices from seeping in.
Tung oil is ideal walnut finish; it gives an attractive dark brown lustre to the wood grain. Walnut has open, porous grain structure that requires multiple coats of tung oil to fill and achieve a smooth, even finish.
Woods such as oak, mahogany and walnut are characterized as having “open grain” because the wood pores are large. In contrast, “closed grain” woods like hard maple, cherry, poplar and beech have smaller pores. You don't have to fill the pores of any wood before applying a finish.
Moreover, stains tend to wash out the grain, removing bits of character. For this reason, a natural walnut wood product is rarely stained. Instead, walnut furniture tends to get a clear coat finish; either of some type of varnish, wax, oil, or lacquer.
It is recommended in general to apply some wood protection such as a borate treatment followed by an oil sealer. I like to use "boiled" linseed oil on wood exposed to the weather around my farm. I replaced a couple of the boards on my redwood fence that got broken with black walnut just to see how well they would fare.
Tung oil offers a number of advantages over linseed oil, including a food-safe, water-resistant finish that's not prone to mold and a beautiful matte amber color that doesn't darken over time. For your next project, give Pure Tung Oil products by the Real Milk Paint Co.
General Finishes EF Sanding Sealer is a high quality acrylic waterborne sanding sealer that builds fast and makes sanding smooth and easy. For wood with large, open grain, such as walnut or mahogany, sanding sealer is especially handy as a final fill after most of the grain has been evened out with grain filler.
Species such as maple and walnut dry at an intermediate rate, ie a 1” walnut board air dried in the south in the summer time will dry in about 120 days, and species such as oak, mesquite, and hickory dry very slowly (ie 1” per year).
Seasoning Time for Walnut Species
Typically speaking, Walnut firewood requires 6-months to 24-months to season. It can take over a year or more for most walnut wood firewood to dry out completely.
Freshly sawn Walnut is a greenish-brown color heartwood with nearly white sapwood. This is a stark contrast for many who desire the appearance of all heartwood. The removal of the sapwood can be costly as the perimeter of the log contains the clearer, and hence more valuable lumber.
Shellac. In my opinion, shellac is the best natural wood finish for one main reason: it's the most protective natural finish on the market. Unlike other options, shellac forms a barrier on top of the wood, stopping water, dirt, and other things (*cough*crayon*cough) from reaching the pores of the wood.
Danish oil
It is often used on bare wood to provide a natural-looking, matte finish. This type of oil penetrates deeply into the wood grain, giving it a rich, lustrous appearance. Unlike wood finishes such as varnish or lacquer, Danish oil does not require sanding between coats and can be applied directly to bare wood.
Walnut trees thrive in fertile, deep, well-drained soil. They begin to bear fruit four to i ve years after being planted and can continue to grow and bear fruit for a century or more. Walnuts are harvested using mechanical shakers that shake the nut to the ground during harvest time in September through November.
What Are The Basics of Getting a Fantastic Wood Finish? The solid walnut top, above, is a slightly different story. I finished it with just a hand-rubbed tung oil varnish, applying 8 coats to protect the top surface while giving the walnut a gorgeous, natural warm glow, too.
If you love how linseed oil makes your paints flow but aren't keen on how it yellows over time, you might want to replace it with walnut oil. While typically more expensive and slower to dry, walnut oil has less of a tendency to yellow—which means you can use it with light colors without worry.
As has been noted, linseed makes the strongest film, but yellows more. Walnut is not as strong, but yellows less. Other oils, of course, are also used and some paint makers mix them or use different oils in different paints.