Why is oilcloth made with linseed oil?
I've been looking into making an oilcloth tarp. All the sources I have read so far seem to consider linseed oil the only oil to use, and I'm wondering why that is.
So, what, if anything, is it about linseed oil that makes it a good oil for oilcloth?
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2 answers
Linseed oil is used because it's a drying oil,
A drying oil is an oil that hardens to a tough, solid film after a period of exposure to air. The oil hardens through a chemical reaction in which the components crosslink (and hence, polymerize) by the action of oxygen (not through the evaporation of water or other solvents).
It also looks like the alternatives are not considered to work as well as linseed.
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In addition to the answer by Charlie, Linseed oil is probably used in many instructions because it is what was historically used to create oil cloth.
A nice tutorial for creating historical oil cloth is for example the following YouTube video by an American reenactment channel:
Oil Cloth - Waterproof Coverings for Your Campsite
This post was sourced from https://outdoors.stackexchange.com/a/22470. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
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