Milk Paint Pt2

Mila wrote: I found this milk paint recipe. Has anyone had any experience with milk paint as an interior wall paint? I thought this might be less toxic than regular paint. I understand it isn’t very washable. Appreciate your input. The recipe you list here doesn’t sound very waterproof, and since the amount is so small I’m guessing it was intended for painting crafts and such.

However, there is a way to make milk paint that is great for walls or even exterior jobs. It holds up great outside – very waterproof, almost plastic-like. Pioneers painted canvas roofs of sheds and waterproofed their covered wagons with it. You can color it with any sort of water soluable powdered dye. Art stores usually carry them, or you could even use RIT or any of those cheapie dyes from the drugstore. Just experiment first with the color to see how much of it you need to put in.

To make 5 gallons of this milk paint,

• stir 2 quarts of builder’s lime, OR 3 quarts of sifted white hardwood ashes (one or the other, not both) into
• 4 gallons of skim milk.
• Stir very thoroughly.
• Then, stir in one gallon of linseed oil.
• Then add your dye.
• Last, strain the paint through a piece of cheesecloth to get any lumps out.

That’s it! Just be sure you use it within 2 days of mixing it. You can use either raw or boiled linseed oil.

Some people like to add fancy drying agents like cobalt compounds to the paint, in which case it’s easier to use boiled because it mixes better with the drying agent. You don’t really need to do that though… you can thin with a little turpentine and that helps dry faster. But any linseed oil paint takes a few days to get really dry. That’s the only “disadvantage” vis a vis commercial paints or drying agents.