Wax?

Hi Mike

I usually use danish oil, not sure if it's totally eco friendly, you may wish to check VOC content. It is made from plant oils and soaks into the wood to provide a hard wearing suface. I have used it for kitchen work tops and it wears very well, even next to the sink. Can also be used outside and is available from most DIY stores.

I've used Osmo polyx waxoil on a new pine floor. Expensive for a small tin, but goes an incredibly long way, and seems to be quite hard wearing (in our boys' bedroom), and moppable. It is also very natural looking to the point that it looks like there's nothing on the wood at all.

That's lovely, Biff

We have Osmo Hardwax oil on oak flooring and some doors. Nice product. It's more like a varnish than an oil (eg it seals the surface better) but unlike a varnish if it wears off it can be more easily recoated.

Curious. Whey is esentially the protein, casein, traditionally used as a binder in limewashes, distempers and other interior paints.

But

"No Toxic Binder: Some conventional oil and water-based finishes contain toxic heavy metals and formaldehyde. PolyWhey’s™ binder is non-toxic whey protein.
Low Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs): Conventional water-based finishes have an average VOC level of 200g/L (grams per liter). PolyWhey has less than 180g/L, well below the strictest U.S. standard of 250g/L."

why is there anything above zero VOC?

Wow. You mean the â„¢. I didn't notice that. I copied the text from that Vermont website but it would only allow me to select the whole page, not just the bit I wanted, so I first pasted it into Notepad, where, curiously, the superscript survived. I then selected the bit I wanted and copied and pasted here, the superscript surviving a second time. Very strange. Maybe they coated it with skimmed milk.

Yes, Biff, the casein is definitely left in the cheese, but I'm not so sure what the composition of the whey actually is; when I have time I will contact them for more information.

BTW, the definition of VOCS includes compounds released from trees, wetlands and human beings and other rather 'nice' things like linseed oil.

Er, sort of, Henry, but Volatile Organic Compound have to be, er, volatile. With stuff like linseed oil it doesn't really 'dry' by releasing volatiles but 'sets' by polymerization. Oxygen is absorbed from the atmosphere tying fairly big molecules together into ginormous chains. Ok, there is a volatile componant - that's what you smell - but it is miniscule and quite different from the paints that have a volatile solvent such as tupentine or its petrochemical derived substitues and which can form a large part of the bulk of the 'wet' paint.

Cracked it George, it's not a superscript, it's the Trade Mark Symbol, Character 2122. In MS Word, go to Insert, Symbol, Letterlike Symbols and find it near the bottom.

for once i might be of some use.

those lovely supercript/ subscript and whatever letters:

under the 'windows' operating systems from microsoft: switch on num lock, then hold the 'ALT' key down and type say 191 release 'ALT' . where 191 is number of the letter/symbol. And use, with computers each letter(symbol) has a number(unicode code point) ¡
under Linux, which i use, I normally shift to the language i want to write in, or use the Char select tool. ¿Hola?
under Apple, no idea.

The is a big caveat, it all depends on the font, some fonts will interpretate ® and © say, as something else than 'registered' and 'copyright'. Normally writing letters from different languages is fine, superscript and subscript symbols not always. Each font has a map of how each symbol is displayed, in an order numbered manner.
Most folks who are english natural speakers know this as they have to put with english alphabet everywhere.

Good places if your interested to look are :

- to use the alt key windows (what is #191 ? ):
http://www.w3schools.com/tags/ref_entities.asp

further reading:
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/chars.html#typing
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/html/chars.html
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/chars.html#safe-ascii


cheers alex

Hi,
could somebody tell me if the products mentioned above would be ok in a bathroom and how often do you need to recoat (in any room)?
Thanks, I have been getting conflicting advice about different kinds of varnish.

Thanks Julian, it is for the door. I have got a tin but haven't got around to applying it yet (got no door at all on the bathroom!)

Surreal this thread but I smiled and if I don't have to go m^2 again I'll be happy forever - m²K - yipee!

Not wishing to put a spanner in the works of 'eco' anything.
But what claims/test are carried out on these products? How do we really know they are more environmentally friendly, kinder to kittens and make us all happier?