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We bough a 200+ (but not much more!) old farm house last year, and we're renovating slowly, but surely. Earlier in last year, we we discovered old hardwood floors under layers of linoleum on the second floor and, after sanding, we settled on tung oil to finish them.

Now, it would seems like we didn't properly remove all the excess oil while finishing and now there is a layer of white, sticky residue on the floor.

We do have one solution to clean that mess up at the moment: mineral spirit and really fine mineral wool. It works, but the problem is: it takes forever, a lot of spirit and a lot of mineral wool.

Mind you, I don't care spending the time necessary to save that floor, but I would still be really happy if anyone had a better solution, one that's more time and material effective, so we can concentrate on other parts of the house now ;-)

Jean-Philippe Murray
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In a closet or other inconspicuous area try applying pure undiluted orange oil in a thin layer. This will soften and extract the tung oil, then scrape the softened layer with a 4" or 8" wide razor scraper, periodically scraping off the scraper with a putty knife.

Then go over the floor with orange oil on a rag, then mineral spirits to remove the residue of orange oil. I haven't used this myself on hardwood, but have used it to remove adhesive from concrete.

I realize this may be just too expensive and perhaps sanding is the no nonense professional procedure, but sticky tung oil would probably gum up the sanding belts. And I just hate handling dust.

Edit If all you want to do is remove excess tung oil, maybe you could use an electric floor buffer with pads. Apply a thin layer of orange oil, let sit for 5 minutes or so then run the floor buffer with an absorbent pad over the oiled area. I would not use an electric buffer with highly volatile solvent like mineral spirits because of risk of fire or even explosion.

Jim Stewart
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  • See edit to my answer. – Jim Stewart Mar 21 '17 at 11:22
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    Definitely will be trying orange oil, I'll be on the lookout for that this week, I'll get back with the results! – Jean-Philippe Murray Mar 21 '17 at 11:45
  • You sire, just saved my sanity. I did not find anything specific as "orange oil" at our local hardware store, but I did found some degreaser in the car section that was orange based. Now I was a little afraid because it said that there was some pumice in it, but eh, at the point, if I scratch the floor badly, I'll resand the thing but...

    How boy does it work! I just let the steel wool go and use a towel and it just work. So oranges just saved me ! Thank you!

     – Jean-Philippe Murray Mar 23 '17 at 18:23
  • We used a product labelled "Citrus King Orange Oil www.citrusdepot.net P.O. Box 47254 St Petersburg FL 33743" You might be able to find this or equivalent at a professional cleaning products store. It is not cheap. – Jim Stewart Mar 23 '17 at 21:36
  • What we bought was this, and it works wonders :) http://www.canadiantire.ca/en/pdp/motomaster-pumice-lotion-hand-cleaner-0381017p.html – Jean-Philippe Murray Mar 23 '17 at 22:44
  • I prefer pure citrus ("orange") oil. "Orange" hand cleaner has some orange oil in it, but also a lot of other things, including lanolin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanolin – Jim Stewart Mar 24 '17 at 01:23
  • I'll keep looking when I go to the city, but people in store where puzzled when I asked for orange oil, although, it might help next to say "citrus" oil! :) – Jean-Philippe Murray Mar 24 '17 at 11:06