Birchwood Casey Fast-Drying Long-Lasting Water-Resistant Oil-Based Tru-Oil Stock Finish Bottle, 3 Ounce

I absolutely LOVE Birchwood Casey's TruOil! I've used it on gun stocks, knife handles and even expensive guitar parts (bodies & necks) with incredible results! It's a fantastic, easy-to-apply, transparent hardening finish that levels very well, cures fully in just a few days and can be applied by sponge, rag or truly "by hand" with your fingers. There's even have an aerosol version available that works very well for larger, flat surfaces! My personal favorite is the bare hand technique...I finished the guitar neck in the picture below by rubbing the coats in with my fingers and lightly sanding between the coats. Built up quickly and came out great! Fewer and thinner coats will create a more satin finish, while more generous application and/or an increased number of coats can develop a deep gloss finish that rivals most professional sprayed finishes for depth and smoothness! TruOil dries harder than most polymerized varnishes, making it very durable and wear resistant, but if it is ever damaged, it is easily repaired by sanding lightly and adding additional layers of TruOil or spot finishing if the area is small enough. Furthermore, TruOil is one of the more transparent finishes out there (very minimal tinting effect on lighter woods) and it really makes figured wood grain "pop" visually in ways that wipe-on poly and similar finishes don't. It also goes a long way, so a small bottle can easily do a couple gun stocks or other wooden parts. All in all, TruOil is among the best looking, most durable and easiest to work with DIY finishes out there! Highly recommended!

I bought a fountain pen a couple of years ago that was supposed to have come with a gloss finish. It did not. In fact, it did not appear to have any finish on it at all. I saved the pen and thought that I might refinish it someday. Then I came across the Tru-Oil. I had used this stuff clear back in the 1970s on a .22 cal. Wards Western Field rifle. I remembered it having done a pretty good job on the rifle so I tried it again, but this time on the fountain pen. The barrel and cap of the fountain pen are made of California Buckeye Burl. This appears to be a type of precious hardwood that looks a lot like marble. If you get a good enough finish on it, then it definitely looks like marble or maybe even better. One drawback to the wood in the pen is that it does contain some pits and other flaws. Probably for this reason, it took several coats of Tru-Oil to do the job. Multiple coats of Tru-Oil will eventually fill most imperfections in the wood. I used the index finger on my right hand to apply the Tru-Oil. I used fine steel wool between coats. I'm not sure of the coarseness of the steel wool because it just said "finest" on the package in English and then some other things in other languages. The trick to getting a beautiful finish seems to be first to get the wood completely filled and then to apply the top coat evenly. The top coat was very tricky for me and I had to do it over a couple of times to get the finish that I really wanted. I think the trick is to rub the Tru-Oil on very quickly and as thin as possible. You can feel the Tru-Oil quickly getting tacky. It sets up very quickly. Keep your finger moving and use the least amount of finish as possible. With practice, you can level the finish by skimming your finger quickly and lightly over it. But don't try to do this too long when the finish starts to get tacky. The grain of the wood in the pen I finished with Tru-Oil has a translucent 3-dimensional look. Some of the grain looks 1/16" - 1/8" deep. This reminds me of looking at the designs inside glass playing marbles that we had when we were kids. We were good at playing marbles and we had about a gallon of them saved up at one time that we had won in marble games at school during recess and lunch hour. The top coat of Tru-Oil on the pen is extremely high gloss. It's as smooth and bright as glass or even better. I have an Eastman mandolin that has a lacquer-over-spirit-varnish finish on the maple wood back of it. The maple on the back of the mandolin is flamed maple, like a lot of violins and some guitars. The finish on the mandolin has this same 3-dimensional look. I'm waiting to see how well the Tru-Oil finish holds up on the fountain pen. Fingers produce acid and oils and it will be interesting to see how this affects the Tru-Oil. At any rate, the finish looks very good and this is only the second time I've used the Tru-Oil. I think doing a gunstock should be easier than doing a classic fountain pen. If there is anything that could use improvement with the Tru-Oil, it would probably be that it could flow out a little more easily. I like the idea that it dries fast (you are supposed to be able to apply the next coat after 2-3 hours), but I find it a little difficult to flow it out evenly on a surface like this fountain pen. Anyway, the finish on the pen turned out very good, I think. It's interesting to see all the applications that people are using the Tru-Oil for besides gunstocks.

Followed directions. Went on easy. Dried pretty quick. Great finish.

First of all this is a great product. I highly recommend it! I’m using it to finish a guitar I’m building and finding tons of conflicting information on how to use Tru-oil. Maybe this is due to its popularity + everybody has an opinion. I heard one guy on YouTube say it was not self leveling. First of all, forget self leveling. Self leveling sounds great but is very misleading. Tru-oil is as self leveling as anything out there. Think of it as a very thinned out polyurethane that you apply in super thin coats. It consists of 56% mineral paint thinners, 33% oil varnish, and also 11% linseed or Tung oil, again as self leveling as anything else. OK, so considering all the above, in order to get the smoothest shiniest finish I apply Tru-oil in very, thin coats and sand between each coat with 1000 – 7000 grit sandpaper or above (because of the possibility of a raised wood grain I used 320 - 400 grit sandpaper after the first coat only). Even after using the polishing grits (1000 grit & above) of sandpaper between coats there was no problem with coats not sticking to each other (delaminating) I put on enough coats until it looks professional, even & shiny (usually between 15 and 30). So far I’ve been applying (rubbing in) the coats with my bare fingers as it says in the instructions). I stop rubbing the finish in when it still looks smooth yet starts to pull on my hands the tiniest bit. I don’t rub the coats until it’s sticky and pulling as some people suggest. Quite honestly, I think the sanding between coats to get rid of imperfections is the most important thing, along with a very long cure time (2 weeks to a month) before buffing. Also note: I read a negative review before purchasing this product. The negative review said that it didn’t truly cure and a way to test this was to put masking or duct tape on the finish and wait for about 20 minutes and pull the tape off. I tried this on my tests & found that the tape didn’t affect the finish at all. Just as shiny as ever (I was expecting a tiny bit of residue with the duct tape but even that was beyond minimal) & no delaminating at all. Take note that I all my Tru-oil tests were done over dyed wood on Flamed Maple. Final thoughts. The wood you are working with must be perfectly sanded before using tru-oil. I go up through the grits ending up with 320 – 400 for my final grit before staining and applying the tru-oil finish. In my experiments over the past few months, I found that thinning with gum turpentine or mineral spirits was not necessary. In fact I found that thinning with gum turpentine dulled the final results a bit.

Realmente es fácil de aplicar y se obtiene un buen acabado. En mi caso lo utilice para repintar el cuello de una guitarra eléctrica y me ha gustado mucho como quedo. Por otra parte es bastante rendidor.

Have used this on two walnut gunstock and multiple knife handles. With multiple coats and fine sanding you can achieve very nice high gloss finish. Or satin finish with fewer coats. Dries quickly and not too smelly. Highly recommend. Thier gun blue works very well too.

人気なのが分かります。匂いもキツくないしムラになりにくいのも良い。蓋は独特なので壊さないように気をつけて下さい。中蓋も爪楊枝で穴を開けるだけにしないと揮発するので注意。海外の人によるとしっかり空気を抜いて閉めればかなり長持ちするみたいです。パラフィルムやラボピタなどを1cm角に切って、空気を抜いてから、空けた穴にぺったりと吸いつくよう張り付かせて密閉し、蓋をすると良いかと思います。

I just followed the instructions and it worked perfectly. Very good product!!!

仕上がった後もベタつきも無くとても綺麗に仕上がりました