Extra Virgin Olive Oil

[elynnia]

Hallo,

I was trying to clean up an acoustic guitar I have, and I was wondering if it's ok to use olive oil to polish the fingerboard and the bridge. I've used olive oil on other wood projects, but guitars may be different...

...elynnia

[crvrotkvica]

Hallo,

I was trying to clean up an acoustic guitar I have, and I was wondering if it's ok to use olive oil to polish the fingerboard and the bridge. I've used olive oil on other wood projects, but guitars may be different...

...elynnia

Yes, You can, it`s only thing you can use beside lemon oil, which is standard for oiling the fretboard, as I know. I have used it, works nice, but I have never used it on realy quality instrument, I do not know why, maybe because lemon oil is not too expencive in my country. iIf You can go to some shop that sells violins and ask for oil for fingerboard, You shall have the real thing, if not, virgin olive oil works pretty good.

[Mattia]

Er...I wouldn't.

Olive Oil is NOT a drying oil; it'll stay 'sticky', never harden, and isn't much of a polish at all. All you need is a clean cloth, a bit of elbow grease (just buff it), some fingerboard oil (lemon oil, whatever; it's essentially mineral oil, I believe...) if you must.

Only thing I'd ever use olive oil for in a woodworking related project is a drop or two (tiny drops) for the purposes of french polishing.

[unclej]

i have to agree with mattia here..i'm afraid that if you used olive oil very often it would become rancid. i've said it before here many times..a bottle of plain old mineral oil is inexpensive and will last forever. it's approved by the fda as a salad bowl finish and i've been using the same bottle here in my shop for close to two years and i treat a lot of fretboards.

[GodBlessTexas]

Don't use olive oil. If you want to use an oil other than lemon for your fretboard, get bore oil for woodwind instruments. It lasts longer than lemon oil and it doesn't get sticky.

GBT

[tasty]

Unless you were planning on frying some chicken parm on about the 14 fret don't use olive oil.

[Southpa]

I have a little bit of rosewood oil that I've used on my rosewood fretboards. If I'm going to rehydrate the surface of my fretboard I may as well use "the essence of what its made of" when available. The oil soaks in well and cleans up easily, no residue and gives the wood that "new" look.