Making varnish for the Redwood Violin

[@NomadMakes]

This is really cool. I am currently on my way down the rabbit hole of making my own varnish. Have you tried liming the rosin to increase the melting point of it? Cheers and thanks for sharing.

[@magwaawgam5350]

Just what I was searching for?! Thank you very much. I have a sailing boat with a wooden top. I want to waterproof it DIY style, I'll use your method. Thanks!

[@fernandocoton4316]

Great idea, thanks for sharing !! Please I would like to know how long it takes to dry and if you think it would be a good idea to add a little lime to speed up the drying? Greetings and thank you very much !!

[@RavenousResearcher]

Hello!!! I don't know if this channel is active still but I wanted to ask if you had experience with or know if it is possible to make varnish out of other precious resins. Specifically I am interested in doing frankincense, myrrrh, or a combination of the two! I know that it must be possible but the one book that contains a myrrh recipe is from the 30's and I can only find one copy in German, haha. I tried to send you an email to ask but it looks like that mailbox has been closed down. Regardless, I love your content and it's so cool the information you are sharing with folks! What a beautiful and historical hobby!

[@---zh8qn]

Well, the channel seems to be inactive, but maybe i can help you with the book as i was wondering the same thing. (german is my native language)

[@magwaawgam5350]

Two questions. Firstly... The Amber that you use, is it the Amber that's left over after extracting the turpentine? Or the Amber before extracting the turpentine? 2nd question. If I had to paint the varnish on my boat, how wood the varnish react under a hot sun? Would it become soft? Or would it remain hard and in its place?

[@presterjack9764]

The varnish will harden in the sun; a chemical reaction happens where the linseed oil's fatty acids combine with each other and with the pine resin as it dries which creates a hard polymer. So the sticky stuff you see is not its final state.

[@indignocat]

This is a great initiative, mr. Carruthers! I was about to venture into cooking oil varnish this way, but never thought that some pine resin would do just fine, regardless of what MaestroNet may think. I have a question: would linseed oil work just as well in lieu of walnut oil? (I have both) Also, were (raw) oil and resin cooked together, or mixed while heated apart? (so I can buy appropriate pans and containers) Are turps added on-demand to modulate apparent viscosity, or is there a suggested maximum percentual volume? That's a lot of questions, but since the ingredients portrayed here are *the only ones* I can source in my country, I'm really excited about the possibility to finally follow the example.

[@redwoodviolin]

You can certainly use linseed instead of walnut oil. I usually cook the resin down for color, cool it , weigh out a quantity, crush that and add the cold oil to it, then heat it all together. The turps is added to make the varnish brushable, so the amount you add will depend on things like how much oil is in the mixture and how stiff of a brush you will use. I'm not very methodical, I eyeball it. probably about 30% (this is just a guess) by volume added to the hot oil/resin mixture. I like it to be a little too stiff to use when it is at room temp, then I can thin some of it down again for use. If you add too much turps you can put it back in the pan and boil some of it off. I usually do my resin cooking with the lid off. Cooking it with the lid on, as I did to make the turpentine, gives you a completely different substance which seems to be very prone to cracking when made into a varnish. You may or may not like that.

[@indignocat]

@@redwoodviolin Thank you so much for the prompt reply! The process is, in essence, simpler than what I had considered, so I'll start gathering everything necessary. Would this recipe, in your experience, allow for the incorporation, to a partial extent, of amber resin in addition to the colophony, without adversely affecting the final result? I have both resins, and thought that amber may provide additional rigidity to the varnish layer, but this is of course just an untested conjecture of mine.

[@redwoodviolin]

I’ve never used amber so I just don’t know. I generally like to keep things as simple as possible.

[@indignocat]

@@redwoodviolin Fair enough; I'll post a video reply as soon as I successfully cook the varnish following this recipe, to encourage other makers to follow your initiative 😃 Thanks for clearing everything up! Best wishes!

[@violinmaker4271]

Amber makes a harder varnish but I think I’ve heard it requires a much higher temperature than pine resin to melt.

[@mahmoudabokhder3418]

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