• Congratulations to James Seyfried, People's Choice in the September 2025 Turning Challenge (click here for details)
  • Congratulations to Bill Clark for "Meadow Lark Symphony" being selected as Turning of the Week for October 6, 2025 (click here for details)
  • Welcome new registering member. Your username must be your real First and Last name (for example: John Doe). "Screen names" and "handles" are not allowed and your registration will be deleted if you don't use your real name. Also, do not use all caps nor all lower case.

Suitable replacement for minwax antique oil

Joined
Jul 21, 2008
Messages
195
Likes
22
Location
Staunton, VA
So as some may already know, Minwax discontinued their antique oil finish. This was my favorite, which I used almost exclusively. Tung oil doesn't do it for me, and their brand tung oil finish takes several days to dry. I tried adding japan drier to it and it still was tacky after a couple days. This is completely unacceptable for me. It also doesn't have the same amount of shimmer in the woodgrain, which was part of the draw for the antique oil. Waterlox is quite a bit more expensive than the antique oil was. I thought about using a homebrew style varnish with 1 part turpentine, 1 part boiled linseed oil, and one part urethane varnish, but every time I've used it in the past the surface ends up far too glossy for my taste. Even after buffing with white scotchbrite pads. I'm open to suggestions. I have a few bowls ready for sanding and varnishing and only have 1 can of the antique oil left. The first coat I saturate the wood then buff it out with a white scotchbrite pad. I use a lot more finish than most people, but I think I get a lot better shimmer than I can get with urethane or spar varnish. Anyway, I'm needing a replacement and I don't want to just buy a bunch of different, expensive products. I've heard good things about general finishes products, but I'd rather see some results first. Thanks in advance.
 
Last edited:
I have used lots of finishes, and made lots of concoctions, over the last forty years as a woodworker. I have just done my first couple of projects with Osmo Poly-x oil, and I'm a convert. Fine Woodwork did a roundup of the new oils recently, and Poly-x came out on top. There is a thread here that is fairly recent if you search.
 
I use Minwax Quick Dry Poly. It used to be a much thicker viscosity, but it’s much thinner these days. A little more mineral spirits will maybe get you where you want. Personally, I’m happy with applying it with a ball of cotton cloth right out of the can. I sand between coats and do a 0000 steel wool buffing at the end.
 

Attachments

  • dfly2.jpg
    dfly2.jpg
    82.5 KB · Views: 10
I too am a big fan of Min-Wax Antique Oil finish. A friend found a quart can and pint can for me recently in an old fashioned hardware store. I may need to put them under lock and key :). I'll definitely be using a stop-loss bag when I open them. A very similar finish is Tru-Oil by Birchwood Casey. It is marketed for finishing gunstocks. It's awfully close to the min-wax product in application and appearance. You can buy a small jar to try it out. Easy to find on Amazon and other places.
 
So as some may already know, Minwax discontinued their antique oil finish. This was my favorite, which I used almost exclusively. Tung oil doesn't do it for me, and their brand tung oil finish takes several days to dry. I tried adding japan drier to it and it still was tacky after a couple days. This is completely unacceptable for me. It also doesn't have the same amount of shimmer in the woodgrain, which was part of the draw for the antique oil. Waterlox is quite a bit more expensive than the antique oil was. I thought about using a homebrew style varnish with 1 part turpentine, 1 part boiled linseed oil, and one part urethane varnish, but every time I've used it in the past the surface ends up far too glossy for my taste. Even after buffing with white scotchbrite pads. I'm open to suggestions. I have a few bowls ready for sanding and varnishing and only have 1 can of the antique oil left. The first coat I saturate the wood then buff it out with a white scotchbrite pad. I use a lot more finish than most people, but I think I get a lot better shimmer than I can get with urethane or spar varnish. Anyway, I'm needing a replacement and I don't want to just buy a bunch of different, expensive products. I've heard good things about general finishes products, but I'd rather see some results first. Thanks in advance.
me too
 
Tru-Oil by Birchwood Casey,Poly-x both are incredibly expensive compared to the old AO pricing

Osmo polyx-oil AU $74.00 375ml. and Birchwood AU $29.99 for 3oz​

In the US, 3 oz of Tru-Oil for $8.29 on Amazon (enough to see if you like it). 8oz for $16.60 delivered if you have Prime. I haven't seen bigger bottles, but I didn't look very hard.
 
In the US, 3 oz of Tru-Oil for $8.29 on Amazon (enough to see if you like it). 8oz for $16.60 delivered if you have Prime. I haven't seen bigger bottles, but I didn't look very hard.

Thanks for that. Found it on Amazon as you said
 
I have switched to Osmo Poly-x oil and really like it. Drying time is 24 hours and with 2 or 3 light coats it leaves a nice satin sheen.
 
My go-to finish for bowls is Tried and True Original. It's a mix of beeswax and polymerized linseed oil. It contains no varnish, no additives, no driers.
 
+1 for Osmo Poly-X. It is pricey but a little goes a long way. I switched from Sutherland Welles Hard Oil Sealer, which I like, but it needs more coats. I still use Sutherland Welles Millie's finish for food contact bowls- beeswax, polymerized tung oil and citrus solvent..
 
Suggest you give minwax helsman spar a try. Semigloss. Thin 1-1 with paint thinner. Minwax quick dry poly works pretty well also. Apply like the “antique oil” (which is just a thinned varnish).
 
Suggest you give minwax helsman spar a try. Semigloss. Thin 1-1 with paint thinner. Minwax quick dry poly works pretty well also. Apply like the “antique oil” (which is just a thinned varnish).
I use that often, thinned well down, for tool handles if they might end up outside or around moist things. I will choose poly-x for pretty though. The Helmsman spar isn't what it used to be, either. They have changed it for modern regulations.
 
I haven't read Flexner's book in a long time but my memory of it is that both Antique oil and most Danish oils are in the same family, as blends of oil/varnish/thinner. The differences are in the relative proportions of each component. If a mixture of 1/3 of each is too glossy, add more oil. Or as Doug mentions above, try some semigloss varnish instead of gloss.

By the way, I am also a convert to Osmo Polyx. In my previous posts on Osmo, I commented on the the huge number of bowls made over a 5 year period from a single can, thus making it very cost effective.
 
Suggest you give minwax helsman spar a try. Semigloss. Thin 1-1 with paint thinner. Minwax quick dry poly works pretty well also. Apply like the “antique oil” (which is just a thinned varnish).
Unfortunately Minwax products are no longer for sale here, local made equivalents have forced them off the market and unfortunately not as good.
 
I haven't read Flexner's book in a long time but my memory of it is that both Antique oil and most Danish oils are in the same family, as blends of oil/varnish/thinner. The differences are in the relative proportions of each component. If a mixture of 1/3 of each is too glossy, add more oil. Or as Doug mentions above, try some semigloss varnish instead of gloss.

By the way, I am also a convert to Osmo Polyx. In my previous posts on Osmo, I commented on the the huge number of bowls made over a 5 year period from a single can, thus making it very cost effective.
tried amazone here
 
I use that often, thinned well down, for tool handles if they might end up outside or around moist things. I will choose poly-x for pretty though. The Helmsman spar isn't what it used to be, either. They have changed it for modern regulations.
The final look of regular and spar varnish is in how the wood is prepped and the finish applied - can look just as pretty as hardwax oil for much less $. The advantage of the thinned varnishes is penetration into the wood and physical strength of the cured varnish. Hardwax oils don’t achieve either one. No problem for good strong wood, but highly spalted or other weakened wood benefits from the penetration and addition of the physically stronger varnish contents.
 
Minwax Antique oil may have had a mysterious recipe, but it wasn't from exotic ingredients. There was no tung oil in it, as best I recall. Otherwise, start with 80% mineral spirits and add an oil and varnish of your choice, until you get a good copy. Since this is also the basic recipe for Danish oils, if I were in your shoes, I'd try out a few of those, and one of them is likely to work for you.

I used Birchwood Casy tru-oil for pens and reel seat inserts a decade ago and it's a nice finish, in the Danish oil category. The only problem with is the price and that it gels very quickly.
 
The final look of regular and spar varnish is in how the wood is prepped and the finish applied - can look just as pretty as hardwax oil for much less $. The advantage of the thinned varnishes is penetration into the wood and physical strength of the cured varnish. Hardwax oils don’t achieve either one. No problem for good strong wood, but highly spalted or other weakened wood benefits from the penetration and addition of the physically stronger varnish contents.
This is what I'm looking for; something that penetrates well. There's a fine line between polyurethane thinned down and, "looks like plastic wood". I'm extremely picky. I have a quart left of the Minwax antique oil, but after that I'm probably going to try a danish oil or waterlox. I'm just bummed that everything available that's a hard curing varnish is twice the price of antique oil. I'm just not a fan of beeswax. It has its place, but I like my bowls to shine for a while longer than wax. I could add japan drier to antique oil and put a second coat on the same day. Minwax's Tung oil finish takes a few days to cure, which makes it a poor choice for me. I tend to turn a few bowls, then sand a few bowls, and finish a few bowls, all lumped together. It takes me a lot longer if I work one at a time.
 
This is what I'm looking for; something that penetrates well. There's a fine line between polyurethane thinned down and, "looks like plastic wood".
The thinned spar will penetrate through 1/4” walls with spalted wood. I flood it on, keep wet for ~ 30 min, let it just start to gel, then wipe/buff off. Takes practice initially. I use semigloss so negative grain isnt shiny, which creates the plastic look.

Minwax's Tung oil finish takes a few days to cure, which makes it a poor choice for me.
Haven’t used that product in 15-20 years. Back then it behaved just like thinned mw poly.

I tend to turn a few bowls, then sand a few bowls, and finish a few bowls, all lumped together.
I do the same, usually 4-6 pcs at a time.
 
I came across the history of Minwax products, which actually listed the 'how and the 'why', but its no longer available. I think if you dabble around with BLO, Urethane spar varnish and mineral spirits, you should get close to what you're after. Well that's what I am doing at present.

Found this, although it has less info than I thought.
 
Last edited:
It should not be difficult to find (or home-brew) a finish that replicates Minwax Antique Oil in application and result.

Waterlox (the sealer would be very close to Minwax Antique Oil) might seem "expensive" if you compare it to many hardware store finishes, but but it is still not much when the cost of a pint or quart is spread over 25 or 50 bowls.

Even better, in my experience, and keeping in mind the point about finishing not being all that expensive in the overall context of woodturning costs, the Sutherland Welles line of polymerized tung oil finishes seems to be a good choice for your finishing preferences, and a very flexible one for getting the level of shimmer you want without a film. Their "sealer" penetrates well to accentuate the figure in the wood and dries/cures very quickly. You can either follow with one of the tung oil lustres (low, medium, high) or just blend in as much of the "high lustre" with the sealer as suits your preference for shimmer, lustre, drying time etc. If you prefer a one-step approach, you might find that you can skip the sealer and start and end with the low lustre. BTW, these products are also sold by Lee Valley under its own label (it is their "Polymerized Tung Oil" group of finishes). Not inexpensive, but really good stuff.

If you want something in the same price range as the Minwax Antique Oil, and if you can get it, you will also find Circa 1850 Tung Oil and "Antique Danish Oil" products to be very similar to Minwax Antique Oil. The manufacturer is Canadian, so this might not be widely available in the US, but I see that Jamestown Distributors in Rhode Island ships Circa 1850 products.

Also, as others have noted, there are many inexpensive hardware store "Danish Oil" products that will be very similar to Minwax Antique Oil.

If making your own, try your recipe again but with more mineral spirits and less poly (and I would switch to tung oil for the oil).
 
Why tung oil? It matters less in the oil / resin blend under discussion, but in the dialogue about the qualities of tung oil vs linseed oil, I come down quite firmly on the side of tung oil. An apples-to-apples comparison is very difficult, given the various formulations in which both oils are available (pure/raw, polymerized, solvents, driers), and you have to ignore labelling altogether. But on balance, I prefer tung oil because of its superior water resistance and lower tendency to yellow with age. A product that performs really well for me in this category is the Sutherland Welles Wiping Varnish (tung oil, resin, solvents), though I didn't suggest it for Nate because it seems to be quite out of his price range, given the comments in his original post.

With all of that said about tung oil, I do like the Tried and True Original finish (linseed oil and beeswax) on some woods.
 
I too am a big fan of Min-Wax Antique Oil finish. A friend found a quart can and pint can for me recently in an old fashioned hardware store. I may need to put them under lock and key :). I'll definitely be using a stop-loss bag when I open them. A very similar finish is Tru-Oil by Birchwood Casey. It is marketed for finishing gunstocks. It's awfully close to the min-wax product in application and appearance. You can buy a small jar to try it out. Easy to find on Amazon and other places.
I use TruOil when I want to build thinned coats for a glossy finish that is not for food-safe applications. It's very easy to wipe on and level as long as you don't use too much (which is true for most finishes, I think. It can be deglossed with some gentle buffing with 0000 steel wool, or dialed up the other way.

edit to add: I wanted to try that Antique Oil for years after my old favorite Formby's Tung Oil was discontinued, as I figured they might be similar. I just never got around to adding it to my (already too full) cabinet of finishes. I guess I missed my chance.
 
Last edited:
Way back when the AO was available to me here in Australia. I used the Keith Byrnes method of application with the AO, it worked well, and it was all over and done in 10–15 minutes and lasted years. Its this that would be nice to get back to the 10 minute finish
 
I too am a big fan of Min-Wax Antique Oil finish. A friend found a quart can and pint can for me recently in an old fashioned hardware store. I may need to put them under lock and key :). I'll definitely be using a stop-loss bag when I open them. A very similar finish is Tru-Oil by Birchwood Casey. It is marketed for finishing gunstocks. It's awfully close to the min-wax product in application and appearance. You can buy a small jar to try it out. Easy to find on Amazon and other places.
Perhaps there's a hint of a potential solution there. When driving out and about and going through some small town, stop if you see an old fashioned hardware store...never know what cans you may find as the last of their kind.
 
On Nate's original question about a replacement for the (now discontinued) Minwax Antique Oil, I noted in my post (above) the probability that Circa 1850 Antique Danish Oil would be a similar product. While doing some other research this evening, I found a recent entry on the Swing Paints forum (they make Circa 1850 products) in which this very question was posed. The response from Swing was that they used to supply Minwax with the product sold as Minwax Antique Oil in the 70s and 80s, and when they did, it was indeed their Circa 1850 Antique Danish Oil. Swing doesn't know if Minwax changed the forumla when Swing stopped being the supplier, so the trail goes a bit cold. Here is the link to the forum: https://www.swingpaints.com/message/2318

In any event, for Nate and other former Minwax Antique Oil users looking for a replacement, it looks like Circa 1850 Antique Danish Oil could be pretty close. It might be hard to find in the US, but as noted, Jamestown Distributors in Rhode Island is a Circa 1850 retailer and might be persuaded to carry this product. Also, it is sold by Home Hardware stores in Canada, and they might ship to the US.
 
Back
Top