Appearance
When faced with two identical pieces of Oak furniture placed side by side but with a different finish i.e. Tung Oiled or the more commonplace Lacquered finish, people will invariably choose the Tung Oiled furniture as it says something about the persons tastes. Tung Oiled finish on furniture really enhances the look, life and feel of the wood. The Natural grains are enhanced and the feel is always very slightly moist or ‘alive’.
What are the advantages of Tung Oiled furniture?
The wood will continue to look new forever; you only need to re oil once a year to maintain a new appearance. Most finishing Oils available at a DIY store are suitable, eg Danish Oil. Lacquered furniture will scratch and when this happens it will be almost impossible to fix, as the scratches build up (with most furniture it won’t take long) they will start to look very used and tired. With Tung Oiled furniture, not only is it hard to even scratch, if it does scratch it is very easy to wipe over the exposed grains with oil and permanently remove the scratch. Oiled furniture is very easy to do a small repair, not so with lacquered furniture. Should the furniture be stained or even drawn on by children the spot can easily be lightly sanded down and re oiled.
Using Tung Oil as the finish on dining tables is also a good idea as oiled wood is more resistant to heat marks and dents from cutlery than a Laquer finish. The reason for this is that a Lacquered finish does not penetrate below the surface of the wood, and so within a few years is appearance will become dull and ‘yellowed’ and it will be vary hard to produce a sheen like when it was new. Tung Oil actually penetrates the surface offering long lasting protection and allowing you to actually ‘use’ the furniture without having to worry about damaging it.
The Oil we use..
By using only natural ingredients and mixing to enhance the best properties from each ingredient, we are supplied with what we feel is probably the best furniture oil out there today. We have selected this oil to make sure our furniture stays the same for a lifetime, not just the 5 minutes before the children have dinner or the dog decides to chew the chair legs!
If this Laquer Finishes are so bad why is there so much of it in the Market Place?
It mainly comes down to cost, Lacquered products are much easier to produce than oiled products. This is because Lacquer can simply be sprayed on and will dry within minutes, with an Oiled Finish the oil must be applied by hand and then left to dry for 24-48 hrs before packaging.
Lacquers are also preferred by manufacturers as they are able to cover up lower quality wood with it. An Oiled Finish will enhance the Natural Grains and blemishes in the wood, a Laquer on the other hand will blend the wood into one colour. As ‘good’ Oak becomes more and more expensive and harder to find, suppliers in the UK are accepting lower quality wood from their manufacturers to keep the costs low.
I won’t even begin to mention the environmental impact of producing lacquers… |
