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Comment by bluGill | Hacker News Reader

Hardwood is always covered in a plastic finish. Yes it feels different, but it is still plastic.

That's not correct. While many people choose polyurethane finished wood since it is less likely to stain from liquids, oils and varnishes are popular as well.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_flooring#Finishing,_buffi...

Polyurethane is one type of varnish so if you're going to contrast it you'll have to be more specific (phenolic resin or alkyd resin)

Usually oils would be combined with some other varnish, especially on a floor, because they offer nearly zero abrasion or water resistance. You'd think oil finishes like boiled linseed oil or tung oil would offer some water protection because of the oil but they don't. Better than wax or nothing but much worse than varnishes.

This is a table from a book on my shelf by Bob Flexner on the subject, Understanding Wood Finishes. It's a good reference https://imgur.com/a/TzacsLs

Hardwax oils are also used but oftentimes have quite bad VOCs. However, I’m familiar with at least one manufacturer that has low/no VOC oils which certainly shows it’s possible but perhaps there’s a good technical explanation for why VOCs are so common in these oil treatments.

I've not used any hard wax oil finish. I'm surprised reading this [1] though that it offers "Great wear-, water- and heat resistance". But I guess that's from the company also claiming that Monocoat only takes one coat. But, what I'm understanding from that link is also that maybe the curing accelerators have VOCs so maybe the hard wax oils without accelerators don't have the VOC content (?)

[1]: https://www.rubiomonocoatusa.com/blogs/blog/what-is-hardwax-...

What I was looking at was a different manufacturer’s product which talks about how they use vegetable oil which seems intriguing. I’m going to use the espresso wax / stain and see how it turns out with different numbers of coats https://www.interbuild.shop/route/product/product?product_id...

The vegetable oil stood out to me too. That Bob Flexner book emphasizes that oils other than tung and BLO don't cure but instead go rancid which is why they're not used. (Which is also why BLO is boiled because straight linseed oil doesn't cure) I wonder what that process of heating the vegetable oil with the wax does that just heating vegetable oil alone doesn't?

As a side note, I like the low VOC aspect. I've used pure tung oil from Woodcraft before and it doesn't have a strong smell but it give me the absolute worst headache I've ever had. Worse than any exposure to a varnish or paste wax or something I know has VOCs in it.

Good luck with that product, it looks very interesting!

I don't know where you got this from, but I can assure you that's not correct.

They're talking about polyurethane. It does have a plasticy feel too it.

Polyurethane is a type of plastic, and is the most common wood finish for floors.

But most common != always, as you claimed.

Okay,i'll stand corrected there

Is it? Are your referring to the varnish that's applied after?

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