WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN TUNG OIL AND LINSEED OIL?
Greg Lewin offered the following. Tung oil was originally made in China by extracting the oils from the tongue of a particular kind of chicken (the Chinese Showy Red, to be exact). Like gunpowder and paper, the Chinese invented this finish long before Europeans were even walking, but the Brits changed the name to “tung” to avoid the obvious negative connotations of animal by-products. More recently, the Peruvians have imported the Chinese Reds and improved the oil production by crossing the line with a Peruvian chicken (I forget the name), so, like coffee, most of our tung oil comes from South America. Obviously, PETA and Greenpeace and the like have waged a world-wide campaign against using tung oil, which has prompted American manufacturers (who always capitulate to us radical enviro’s) to look for other sources. Hence, they’ve developed linseed oil, which comes from the seed of the linoleum tree. Rob Stokes added: You forgot to mention that during the migration to South America, the
