Danish Oil with a CA finish?

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Hawaiikook808

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Jan 4, 2025
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Kapolei, Hawaii
Hi all,

I'm a noobie to pen-turning and CA finishes, but I have restored plenty of vintage boxes for watchmaking tools. My regular go-to for the boxes is to sand them to a very fine finish and then coat them with several coats of Danish Oil. I love how the oil accentuates the wood grain and captures its natural beauty. I have two custom pens I'm turning for a friend with un-stabilized cherry wood (wood of importance to his family).

I have turned the pens and considered using Danish oil and a CA finish coat. Will this even work? In a sense, I'm trying to encapsulate the Danish oil finish with the durability of the CA.

Let me know what you guys think.

Thanks,

Frank G
 
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Hawaiikook808 said:
Do you think the CA coating was worth it, or would applying a friction polish over the oil be better?
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I'm not a fan of friction polish. I might have been using a cheap one but it seemed to me the shine was dull by the time I pressed the pen together. That's when I made up my mind to go with CA. I use a thin CA as a first coat and let dry naturally to give it time to soak into the wood. When dry I'll put one more thin and switch to med. I'll put three coats of med then start wet sanding. I've been pleased with that so I very seldom put anything else on the wood.
 
My thoughts are this. The old method that has been around for a long time was to use BLO and CA. This has worked well for many over the years. But they use it together. Some use BLO to highlight the grain pattern in a piece of wood and then top coat with CA. That is a different method. You want to change the use of BLO with Danish oil. My thought on this yes it will work fine but you would get same results with BLO because Danish oil is basically BLO, mineral spirits and small portion of polyurethane with some driers mixed in. So the poly will be cancelled out with the use of CA. I too love to use Danish oil for my scrollsawn wood projects and have been using for well over 30 years. It highlights the color of the wood and grain but not too much but with Danish oil it leaves a protective coating of poly on it. BLO does not. It leaves the wood silky smooth to the touch especially when you sand to 220 or higher before hand. If you use Danish oil do not use a friction polish. Just buff it. Hope this is not confusing.
 
Thank you all for the great responses. It's not confusing at all. Two of you mentioned skipping the friction polish, which is also my thought. Though I've only turned a dozen or so pens, the few I used the friction polish on turned dull. I will try using Danish oil and a buff on the first pen. If it looks good, I'll leave it. If not, I may add a CA finish once the Danish oil has cured. I'll be sure to post pics of the results. You guys are the best.

Mahalo,

Frank
 
Hawaiikook808 said:
Thank you all for the great responses. It's not confusing at all. Two of you mentioned skipping the friction polish, which is also my thought. Though I've only turned a dozen or so pens, the few I used the friction polish on turned dull. I will try using Danish oil and a buff on the first pen. If it looks good, I'll leave it. If not, I may add a CA finish once the Danish oil has cured. I'll be sure to post pics of the results. You guys are the best.

Mahalo,

Frank
Click to expand...
When I first started pens, wood was the 'one and only' respectable thing to use for the body blank. I always had issues with the friction pen finish looking great when I first turned and finished it, but after only a little use, the finish would be dull as you said has been your problem. I went the way of applying BLO and CA together for a good while and it was a definite improvement, but after some time, it also dulled. Times pass and methods change and I've moved from mostly wood body pens to resin, but when I do still do a wood or hybrid wood/resin pen, my principal finish is now GluBoost versus anything else. I find the product to be long wearing, and it remains flexible which was one of the advantages of the BLO/CA finish vs pure CA which tended to crack and be rather inflexible causing issues as the wood naturally moved with humidity. I even use GluBoost at times as a final finish for my Alumilite pen blanks when I have embedded something in the Alumilite on casting - the GluBoost seals everything up and allows for a smooth finish over the Alumilite.

If you give the danish oil a while to dry and then give it a light texture with some 0000 steel wool, I would then give applying either straight CA or GluBoost as the final finish - just make sure the oil is dry and that you do not have any wax of any sort on the surface which a quick cleaning wash with Denatured Alcohol should take care of. Good luck!
 
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