Reply To: BLO

For a sawhorse, you really don’t want anything slippery such as a varnish finish. Unfinished is fine. BLO doesn’t build, so it will work as well. A mix of BLO, polyurethane varnish and mineral spirits will work provided you keep the varnish to no more than half or so of the mixture.

Finally, as noted, the term “Tung Oil” can be one of 3 things:

a.) Pure Tung Oil, in which case it will nearly always be called Pure (or 100% pure) Tung Oil. Pure Tung Oil is not a particularly desirable finish as it takes a really long time to cure as compared to BLO.

b.) A mix of oil, varnish, and mineral spirits, in which case it will be called “Tung Oil Finish”. Which makes it really no different than “Danish Oil”, “Teak Oil”, or your own mix of oil (Tung or BLO), varnish, and mineral spirits. Everyone has their own personal favorites.

c.) A thinned varnish (with no oil mixed in), in which case it will also be called “Tung Oil Finish”. The problem is that such a finish will behave very differently from the other two, so you need to know what you’re buying. You don’t want a thinned varnish on your sawhorses, or they will end up with slippery surfaces.