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Here is a method for producing a durable, weather resistant, and lovely milk paint. The secret is PH. Anionic and Cationic layers will cross link and draw to each other.
Since wood is acid, first you start with the base coating. Alkali will tend to draw in and bond to acid. Then when the alkali coating is almost dry, add the acidic coating. The alkali coating and the acid coating will combine strongly, create fairly stable salts, and cause casine, the protein in milk that is the basis of milk paint, to cross link into a durable finish.
Don’t use whole milk, To much milk fat tends to go a bit rancid. This can leave a long lasting, unclean scent. Take 2% milk right from the carton or use powdered milk mixed just as the recipe calls for. Dissolve as much borax into the milk as it will hold. Just like adding sugar to ice tea, you hit a point where crystals collects at the bottom and won’t dissolve. That means the fluid has as much as it will hold. Add a touch more milk stirring until the last of the borax crystals dissolve. Otherwise the borax crystals can give a gritty feel to the surface. The grit can be nice in it’s own way but is not what I am usually trying for.
This treatment makes a great first layer. borax is a very strong anti fungal, insect preventing, antioxidant layer. It is used in industry for all three reasons. In low levels it is also good for plants, so a bit of leakage is not likely to cause environmental issues. If you want to be serious about preservation, soak the wood.
Here is where some adjustment for effect can be made. The plain borax/milk mix will be slightly yellowish white but mostly clear. If you mix in more powdered milk, you will get a stronger antique yellow look. You can substitute builders or masons lime for borax if you want a more opaque, white appearance. If you go with lime entirely, you make classic white wash. A thin white wash will still allow grain to show through. If you want a chipped paint look, thicken the mix with builders or masons lime. A thin paste will crack when it dries and give a rustic chipped surface. Extra agricultural crushed limestone can give an old paint type bone dry finish. If you want a quality white coverage, add titanium dioxide.
Let the first layer almost dry. Then paint or rub on the second coat. This coat is acidic so it will bond and cross link with the first layer.
Add frozen apple juice to more 2% or powdered milk. As you add it, first the milk will curdle, as you add more apple juice concentrate, the milk will uncurdle. When it is fully uncurldled then you have added enough apple juice.
One of my favorite mixtures is powdered milk diluted by room temperature apple juice concentrate. I keep adding milk until it starts to curdle. Then I add a bit more apple juice concentrate to get rid of the curdle. This makes a hard antique yellow coating.
Take serious heed of this warning, Apple juice while being near harmless internally is a very very strong acid. In particular it is very good at breaking down skin. Many plastic gloves will not last long if you are using apple juice.
Concentrated apple juice varies at about PH 2.3 and It can be much stronger. Even diluted it can be quite caustic to skin if it is ignored. I use heavy duty chemical resistant gloves and a lab apron when working with this paint. If it gets on your skin or gets your clothing wet, clean it or change immediately. I did not, and the injury was quite severe.
If you want a nice green color, add some copper sulfate. This will start out blue but will turn into verdigris (Copper Green) and be totally light stable. Copper sulfate is also acidic, so it goes well in this layer. It also protects strongly from insect damage and is often used agriculturally.
Be careful with the copper sulfate, later it will be fine, but while mixing and applying it is a bad chemical to expose your nose, lungs, eyes, mouth and skin to.
It is also good at this point to mix in some oil. Oil will help bond in the borax, and also help preserve and give a good feel to the wood. Oil will also alter the manner that the casein (the protein in milk that makes it a great paint) cross links and will make the casein more flexible and resilient.
Boiled linseed oil is good, but can grow mildew. Linseed oil will also tend to yellow with time. Tung is superb. Safflower will give the clearest color, but you need the right type of Safflower oil. High Linoleic Acid Safflower oil is a superb drying oil and is used in quality oil paints. Most cooking safflower oil is the other type.
Adding oil will help prevent the borax from leeching out and also help preserve the wood. A bit of oil also gives a good feel to the wood. Oil will alter the manner that the casein cross links and will make the casein more flexible and resilient. Don’t worry that the oil does not mix, stir it well and rub it in. I try to pour just enough oil to just cover the surface of the paint.
After a while the oil may mix into it as an emulsion, otherwise, your rag will tend to pick up both oil and milk. Since I will probably come back later and oil it once more, I keep enough oil on the surface, regularly mixing it in, to cover. You will probably have to add more oil as you go. Without the oil, you get a very dry and flat appearance. Nice in it’s own way but not always what I want.
Too much oil and no milk goes into the mix. You can coat with an oil free coating and then rub in oil before the milk is dry. I just like the feel and convenience of both together. The rag will hold up better with oil in it. I like to wipe it on with a rag and then rub it in like you would polish a car.
I rub in the coating with a square ripped from an old towel. I throw away the old towel after doing this layer, and wash all my equipment immediately after I am done. It is easy to wash immediately but if you wait, it can be very hard to clean up. The towel may have to be replaced part way through your work as the apple juice may destroy it. More oil gives satin finish, no oil gives a chalk flat finish.
Making the first layer light colored, and making the second layer darker but thin, gives an appearance of richness and depth. To color this paint, use pigment powders such as the ones used in ceramics. Apart from the very light colors such as yellow and white, a small amount of pigment will go a very long way.
This is also a quality treatment for leather.
This stuff is the cheapest paint you will ever use. Take some scraps, label them with a sharpie, and make some small batches for experiments. At an agricultural supply 50 lbs of lime will be under $10, while you are there get the copper sulfate for less than a can of good paint. At the grocery store, a jug of milk, a box of powdered milk, a few cans of apple juice, and a box of borax won’t set you back too far. Get this stuff and play with it as you wait for your pigment order to come in. Talk to the folks at the pigment place, they are usually quite a good resource.
There are quite a few examples of milk paint remaining from prehistoric times. In my local downtown, there are still Saloon signs, painted on the old bricks, that can be clearly read from the train tracks, these were made with milk paint. This is a paint that, if done well, can survive drastic change.
Bob
I am posting this to preserve for myself what I did to make it.
This tool tote, is closely based on Kit Africa’s Hexagonal Tool Tote in Taunton’s Toolbox Book by Jim Tolpin.
I picked up the book, saw the tote and then had to have the book. I fell in love with the tote at first sight. It reminded me of one of the ancient wooden tool rolls that Japanese Craftsmen would carry to protect their tools from weather and wear. The design has a wonderful timeless look.
In an interview Kit Africa Mentioned two of the Tool Boxes as his favorites, this was one of them.
Here is my son, Nathan with the tote:
H ere it is open:
Here is the mesquite mallet gloat as a bonus:
The initial treatment for the wood, is 2% milk with borax, and the pigment Copper phthalocyanine, or thalo blue. Modern thalo is not considered a toxicity risk, but I would still avoid ingesting it. The older stuff, frightening!
Basically you add borax to the milk until it stops dissolving. Then you add a touch more milk and dissolve the extra borax or pour it into another container leaving the undissolved borax, unless you want a crunchy finish. Then I added enough thalo blue to shade it.
After the initial milk paint was mostly dry, I then painted again with powdered milk mixed into apple juice concentrate. To maintain a reasonably flexible skin, an equal blend of safflower, paraffin and turpentine was rubbed in immediately after the milk and apple juice blend was painted on.
Because the pine has significant resin in the grain, the gold and blue pattern is outstanding. A secong coat of safflower, paraffin and turpentine was added to preserve, waterproof and soften the dryness of surface that milk paint produces.
I find milk paint followed by a penetrating wax coating has a really nice feel.
This tool box gives you a place for tools and most of the materials are inexpensive. The leather strap can be a bit more expensive. I made mine out of pine, brass screws, brass tacks, epoxy, screw posts and horse butt. The horse butt was the most expensive, but then I can strop with the straps. I would advise going to a saddle shop and getting vegetable tan leather for the inner fittings, so that you don’t have too many salts in the leather eating your tools. Getting straps from them or using belts from a resale shop would do well.
As far as the one I made goes,
The Hex end on mine has 4″ long sides. The boards are 24″ long and 1/2 thick. The end peices are a touch thicker. The inside straps are 1″ wide, the outside straps are 2″
To avoid near impossible clamping issues, I taped the whole thing together and marked boards and ends. I predrilled the three fixed boards, screw holes, to the end pieces.
I used masking tape to avoid a mess with the epoxy, and used a slower set epoxy and brass screws to hold the sides together during gluing.
I wanted a rougher finish than the mirror smooth one that came out of my thickness planer, so I sanded at an angle across the grain with 80 grit, to give the look and feel I wanted. Sort of an old sawmill look. This way dings and scratches add character instead of ruining the appearance.
Bob
I got this from Schtoo in Japan I figured since I have made a few adjustable squares, I could do a review of one.
First a quick look:
Cute adjustment tool. Nice look. Love the little x’s.
The inside is as trim and nice. Lots of opportunity for small errors here, I know, I have made a lot of those errors. Don’t see anything to complain about here.
From the side, it seems pretty nice.
Here is the line test:
Too close to tell, so I pulled out the 1-2-3 Block for a more precise check. Bloody perfect it was. Much better than the picture of my testing it. 
Disappointing really, I wanted to use the cute little adjustment tool.
I did it anyway. I could not resist, I loosened one screw. then tightened the other. I checked it. Slightly off.
I am a bad bad boy. I loosened both screws, put it on the 1-2-3 block, and tightened the screws again. No problem, it held position. I stressed it a bit. Put it back on the 1-2-3 block, all was good and tight and totally square.
So the thing is adjustable, kept stable while being sent from Japan to Texas, and looks great. I will see if it stays stable when the humidity goes below 10 percent and the temperature goes over 100 later in the year, that is the real test, till then, I may just start using this square.
Bob
This is actually a total failure of a tool. Nicely made, but worthless. I post this just to show a few methods of tool making.
The shave here is just an example on a couple of finishing methods. Mostly using CA glue. CA is used by pen makers and few of them have any complaints.
Here is a set of quick instructions for one of the easiest finishes you can do. This stuff lasts. Included are a couple of neat tricks for finishing.
You need three things:
Paper napkins: I like Scott brand cause it does not shed a lot of fluff.
Super Glue: The cheap stuff works fine! Called CA by most folk that use it.
High Linoleic Acid safflower oil: This is a superb drying oil and is used in quality oil paints. It does not tend to mildew or yellow. It does dry slowly, but since mineral oil never dries then that is not an issue. If the nutritional label has Polyunsaturated fat as a much higher number (11 to 2 or so) than Monounsaturated fat then it is the right stuff. The other safflower oil (High Oleic Acid) will have the opposite ratio.
BLO handles easier than Safflower Oil, but it yellows, mildews and contains heavy metal drying agents. So I use Safflower Oil.
Here is the Scratch Shave that I am making as a simple experiment, before I make the scratch gauge that I need. 
Just to show the basic mechanics, here it is with the mouth open.
Here it is with the mouth block in place:
Here is my method of resharpening my turning tools while using the lathe! The big dirty green wooden wheel on the lathe is ash with Lee Valley green honing compound.
Another picture of it, I can use the edge to hone the inside of a chisel, or the grove, face or side for most other parts. As It gets mangled, I just clean up the surface. Eventually it will get to small and I will make another wheel.
Here is another neat trick, if you use sandpaper from a roll, it works even better. You put a finger on the sandpaper over a spot that needs sanding, Then you press with the finger and pull the sandpaper. Most the sanding is done right on that spot. In this case I am using 80 grit paper to ruin the finish. More on that later.
Once again here is the stuff I use to make the finish. I have added the oil to the paper napkin. This makes it shine and keeps the napkin flexible for a while.
It will take most of one thing of CA to make this tool.
Another nice lathe trick is to burnish the wood with clean wood shavings. Note that my hand is around back of the work as I move the shavings across the spinning wood. This heats up and polishes the wood nicely. Remember to keep you hands away from danger as you work.
Here it is close up and burnished:
On the left the tool is unburnished, on the right it is burnished.
Here a couple of drops of CA are about to be rubbed into the spinning wood. Slowest setting cause you do not what to scatter drops of CA all over the place !
Here it is with the left side burnished and the right side treated with CA.
You can also rub it in without a spinning target. Here is the cap before:
Here is the cap after. This is a thick wet coating. I don’t usually go this thick, but mesquite is weird, CA stays wet on it for a while, and soaks up CA. You can coat and coat mesquite and it will still remain a flat finish after it drys.
Here it is finished.
Here is a close up. Notice the scratches left by the 80 grit paper. This is to show that CA is not great for hiding flaws. Instead it tends to protect and highlight flaws for a long time.
Before making a copy here is the warning, there is no fence at all, on this tool. It is in fact, a horrible tool. It makes a good initial scratch and then wanders wherever it wants to and mangles the surface thereafter!
It works great with a small scraper in it, but I rarely need a scraper this small. In fact, this makes this a ‘pretty’ useless tool. It holds the blade well and is solid, but apart from that, it is worthless. However I wanted to make this experiment before I put a lot of time and effort into a really nice tool. It did prove the point for myself, and I managed to put together some details on finish and method, that I wanted to present.
To tell the truth, for a lot of tools, I prefer a penetrating wax finish made from equal parts of paraffin, safflower oil and turpentine. It has a great feel, preserves stuff well, and is quite ‘repairable.’ It also does a decent job of protecting steel, although I would not use it on complicated stuff as the safflower oil sets up into a nice flexible resin. Nice stuff to have soaked into wood or on a chisel, bad stuff to have in the clockwork.
After making a few things out of ash with this wax for my wife, she wants everything in the house made with just this combination.
Bob
I made a few chicken feeders so that I could be gone for a couple of days and have the chickens kept in good shape.
Here is a close up on the watering bucket;
Here is a close up on the food;
Here is a pair of them ready for action!
Here is a store bought watering system, and one I made in action.
Here is a feeder in action.
Here are the parts, apart from the jugs needed to make it work.
Here are a pair of jugs ready to go, one with water and the other with food.
Here are all the tools I used;
Here is the jig. Very important tool. It lets you space the holes at the right height, make and even spaced pair, and even make sure they are spaced evenly around the bucket.
A note on spacing around the bucket. The more slits, the less structure the bucket has. It needs some curved walls to remain strong. The examples here may have too many slits. The ones in the chicken pictures, have three sets of two slits. This allows for decent structure. A bad chicken can block the water for the rest of the chickens, so multiple slits are needed however. I put two food buckets and two water buckets in with a coop of chickens to make sure they are ok.
Here is the setup to drill the slit holes. The drill can grab and run, so I run the drill backwards to scrape a hole instead of cutting. It still works pretty quickly.
Here is an example of where the drill can run off track quickly.
Be sure when you drill, that you are safe, the area is clear, the bucket is secure in place, and that in the worst scenario, you cannot be hurt.
After drilling holes, this is how I connect them.
Here is what is going on inside the food bucket,
Here are the food and water stands on the jugs, ready to be put in the buckets.
The stands are made from nice big pvc pipes.
Here are the food and water buckets on the jugs, ready for inversion.
The whole point here is to be able to have a lot of food and water available when I am gone for the weekend. This allows the chickens who have to stay cooped up, to stay healthy and happy.
Bob
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