Cleaning Oil Paint Brushes with Linseed Oil and Yardley of London Shea Butter Soap

Linseed oil is readily available in many oil painters’ studios.  Yardley London Shea Butter Soap can be purchased from  a dollar store or pound shop on the cheap.  These two ingredients make for the basis of an excellent cleaning system for cleaning oil painting brushes.

Cleaning Technique:

  1. Pour linseed oil into a bowl or jar, basically enough to cover, soak and wash the brushes in.
  2. Soak the brushes in the oil for several minutes.  If the paint is encrusted, this may take more time and a bit of pressing on the bristles may be necessary to work the oil into the brushes.  For stubborn brushes, leave to soak overnight.
  3. Pull the brushes from the oil and wrap them in a cloth to continue soaking for a few hours.
  4. Wipe off the excess oil with a cloth or paper towel.
  5. In a copper bowl(copper is used because with a bit of heat from hot running water soap will quickly soften) soften a small chunk of Yardley London’s Shea Butter soap.  This soap has just the right mix of ingredients necessary to clean and recondition a brush.  Read the label and you will be amazed at what is in it.
  6. The softened soap can be squeezed in hand like putty.  Take each brush and run the bristles into the soap in your hand and pack it in until saturated.
  7. Lay brushes on damp rag and cover for an hour or so to let the soap work.
  8. Rinse the brushes under running water, then place in container with warm water no more than ferrule high for a final rinse soak.  Remove after a few minutes, re-rinse under running water and hang to dry after patting out excess water.  Dry brushes with bristles down. I simply tape them on my studio desk with painters tape.

Discussion on cleaning mechanism.

Linseed Oil is used as a thinner(medium) for oil paint in the studio.  It will soften the oil, but increase the drying time of the paint.  I use an old fashioned stainless steel lunch tray with a few dividers as a paint mixing pan(palette).  Since there is usually a bit of linseed oil left over in one of the wells after a painting session, I use this excess to clean the remaining oil paint out of the pan at the end of the painting session.  The linseed oil quickly cleans the tray.  By rubbing your brush in the remaining oil and then wiping out the excess with a paper towel after painting, your brushes will stay clean and soft on an ongoing basis.

Some artists prefer to pay top dollar for super duper refined linseed oil with a fancy label on it.  I use good old fashioned Boiled Linseed Oil from my local hardware store for around $8.00 per gallon.

Caveat: Safety Precautions:

  1. The question that may arise for some: Is linseed oil toxic to the skin?  If one has this concern, click here, read the following studies, and then one may determine that for oneself. My personal conclusion was that since cleaning brushes does not involve the consumption of Linseed Oil, the effects, if any, according my reading of these studies would be minimal if any in a short exposure period.   Again, this is one person’s opinion, not scientific certified fact.  For me, contact with Boiled Linseed Oil has not caused any skin disorders or rashes.  One may be inclined to wear gloves if one has this concern.
  2. Never store rags soaked in linseed oil in closed boxes or bags.  They build up heat and can spontaneously combust.
  3. Learn how your city prefers you to dispose of hazardous materials.  Many cities sponsor a couple of free collection days each year for such.  Store any old rags etc. in enclosed heavy duty metal storage containers with water added.  Never flush chemicals and oils down your drain as you are likely to get it right back in your own drinking water later. 

Yardley’s Shea Butter Soap is one of the best hand washing soaps around.  I use it to wash my hands after coming in contact with not only paints but varnishes, and other toxic painting chemicals.  Below is an ingredient list.  The chemicals and extracts listed in bold are the ones that clean and soften your brushes.

Chemical Fact: Water is world’s best and most widely found and used solvent!  Water is the “inert ingredient” listed in thousands of household cleaning products.

  • Sodium Tallowate – ( A true Soap)
  • Water – (Natures cleanser)
  • Sodium Palm Kernelate or Cocoz Nucifera(coconut) Oil – (Basically a Moisturizer used in soaps)
  • Glycerin – (This ingredient will make your brushes soft…..click here to read why it is used in skin care products)
  • Fragrance(Parfum) – (the smell good in a soap)
  • Tallow acid – (Helps soap remain hard)
  • Coconut acid – (another firming ingredient and makes soap lather well)
  • Petrolatum – (used as a moisturizing agent in soap)
  • Sodium choride – (helps keep soap solidified)
  • Butyrospermum Parkii (Shea) Butter Extract – (one of nature’s best moisturizers for the skin….will help soften your brush bristles)
  • Buttermilk Powder – (helps soap make a creamy lather)
  • Titanium Dioxide – (a whitener)
  • Tetrasodium Etidronate – (helps stabilize colors introduced into soap)
  • Pentaosodium Pentetate – (helps stabilize color and consistency in soap)

The photos shown above are from a brush cleaning I started yesterday.  Notice in particular the difference between the color of the bowl of fresh linseed oil and the bowl that my brushes were washed in.  The linseed oil is doing the heavy lifting in this cleaning method.  The soap is final touch and conditioner.

On a final note, I suspect if one uses a different type of oil for an oil painting medium, say sunflower oil, it is likely to work just as well.  For that matter, olive oil makes a decent brush cleaner.

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?

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https://archive.org/details/why-beauty-matters-roger-scruton

or Click here to watch

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Add the following ingredients to a four or six quart crock pot, salt & pepper to taste keeping in mind that salt pork is just that, cover with water and cook on high till it boils, then cut back to low for four or five hours. A slow cooker works well, I [...] Read more →

Painting Plaster Work and the History of Terra Cotta

The 1896 Victorian terracotta Bell Edison Telephone Building – 17 & 19 Newhall Street, Birmingham, England. A grade I listed building designed by Frederick Martin of the firm Martin & Chamberlain. Now offices for firms of architects. Photographed 10 May 2006 by Oosoom

[Reprint from Victoria and Albert Museum included below on [...] Read more →

Books of Use to the International Art Collector

Hebborn Piranesi

Before meeting with an untimely death at the hand of an unknown assassin in Rome on January 11th, 1996, master forger Eric Hebborn put down on paper a wealth of knowledge about the art of forgery. In a book published posthumously in 1997, titled The Art Forger’s Handbook, Hebborn suggests [...] Read more →

Life Among the Thugee

The existence of large bodies of men having no other means of subsistence than those afforded by plunder, is, in all countries, too common to excite surprise; and, unhappily, organized bands of assassins are not peculiar to India! The associations of murderers known by the name of Thugs present, however, [...] Read more →

Here’s Many a Year to You

” Here’s many a year to you ! Sportsmen who’ve ridden life straight. Here’s all good cheer to you ! Luck to you early and late.

Here’s to the best of you ! You with the blood and the nerve. Here’s to the rest of you ! What of a weak moment’s swerve ? [...] Read more →

Of the Room and Furniture

Crewe Hall Dining Room

 

THE transient tenure that most of us have in our dwellings, and the absorbing nature of the struggle that most of us have to make to win the necessary provisions of life, prevent our encouraging the manufacture of well-wrought furniture.

We mean to outgrow [...] Read more →

Clairvoyance and Occult Powers

Vishnu as the Cosmic Man (Vishvarupa) Opaque watercolour on paper – Jaipur, Rajasthan c. 1800-50

 

CLAIRVOYANCE AND OCCULT POWERS

By Swami Panchadasi

Copyright, 1916

By Advanced Thought Pub. Co. Chicago, Il

INTRODUCTION.

In preparing this series of lessons for students of [...] Read more →

A Cure for Distemper in Dogs

 

The following cure was found written on a front flyleaf in an 1811 3rd Ed. copy of The Sportsman’s Guide or Sportsman’s Companion: Containing Every Possible Instruction for the Juvenille Shooter, Together with Information Necessary for the Experienced Sportsman by B. Thomas.

 

Transcript:

Vaccinate your dogs when young [...] Read more →

Indian Modes of Hunting – Musquash

Hudson Bay: Trappers, 1892. N’Talking Musquash.’ Fur Trappers Of The Hudson’S Bay Company Talking By A Fire. Engraving After A Drawing By Frederic Remington, 1892.

Indian Modes of Hunting.

IV.—Musquash.

In Canada and the United States, the killing of the little animal known under the several names of [...] Read more →

U.S. Coast Guard Radio Information for Boaters

VHF Marifoon Sailor RT144, by S.J. de Waard

RADIO INFORMATION FOR BOATERS

Effective 01 August, 2013, the U. S. Coast Guard terminated its radio guard of the international voice distress, safety and calling frequency 2182 kHz and the international digital selective calling (DSC) distress and safety frequency 2187.5 kHz. Additionally, [...] Read more →

Fruits of the Empire: Licorice Root and Juice

Liquorice, the roots of Glycirrhiza Glabra, a perennial plant, a native of the south of Europe, but cultivated to some extent in England, particularly at Mitcham, in Surrey.

Its root, which is its only valuable part, is long, fibrous, of a yellow colour, and when fresh, very juicy. [...] Read more →

Seeds for Rootstocks of Fruit and Nut Trees

Citrus Fruit Culture

THE PRINCIPAL fruit and nut trees grown commercially in the United States (except figs, tung, and filberts) are grown as varieties or clonal lines propagated on rootstocks.

Almost all the rootstocks are grown from seed. The resulting seedlings then are either budded or grafted with propagating wood [...] Read more →

Thomas Jefferson Correspondence – On Seed Saving and Sharing

The following are transcripts of two letters written by the Founding Father Thomas Jefferson on the subject of seed saving.

“November 27, 1818. Monticello. Thomas Jefferson to Henry E. Watkins, transmitting succory seed and outlining the culture of succory.” [Transcript] Thomas Jefferson Correspondence Collection Collection 89

Making Apple Cider Vinegar

The greatest cause of failure in vinegar making is carelessness on the part of the operator. Intelligent separation should be made of the process into its various steps from the beginning to end.

PRESSING THE JUICE

The apples should be clean and ripe. If not clean, undesirable fermentations [...] Read more →

The First Christian Man Cremated in America

Laurens’ portrait as painted during his time spent imprisoned in the Tower of London, where he was kept for over a year after being captured at sea while serving as the United States minister to the Netherlands during the Revolutionary War.

The first Christian white man to be cremated in America was [...] Read more →

Historical Uses of Arsenic

The arsenicals (compounds which contain the heavy metal element arsenic, As) have a long history of use in man – with both benevolent and malevolent intent. The name ‘arsenic’ is derived from the Greek word ‘arsenikon’ which means ‘potent'”. As early as 2000 BC, arsenic trioxide, obtained from smelting copper, was used [...] Read more →

The Flying Saucers are Real by Donald Keyhoe

It was a strange assignment. I picked up the telegram from desk and read it a third time.

NEW YORK, N.Y., MAY 9, 1949

HAVE BEEN INVESTIGATING FLYING SAUCER MYSTERY. FIRST TIP HINTED GIGANTIC HOAX TO COVER UP OFFICIAL SECRET. BELIEVE IT MAY HAVE BEEN PLANTED TO HIDE [...] Read more →