AnotHer use for BLO.

Ran across this a few minutes ago, thought you guys would like it:

"The sails were blown away, men washed from the pumps, and the boats and other things above the deck wrecked by the heavy seas... Two wooden, ten-gallon kegs, containing boiled linseed [flax] oil, were lashed to the quarters of the vessel. The oil was allowed to ooze out through two small holes in the heads of the kegs. The effect was all that could be desired. After the oil had spread, no water came on board, the men returned to the pumps, the vessel was pumped out, and the decks were cleaned up. During the sixteen hours in which the oil was used eight gallons were expended."

I had heard about using oil to calm troubled waters a few times, and thought I would look it up. It works. Maybe I'll take a can of BLO when I go fishing in my canoe.

It's worth a shot.

Canola would be cheaper

The physics behind it are actually pretty interesting if you're into that sort of thing. I've kind of wondered how large of waves it would calm because its basically working by reducing wind friction on the water (simplified) so you would have to calm a large enough area to reduce the secondary wave action. It looks like ~2tbsp will calm small waves on about 1 acre of water[1] so eight gallons would calm 1000+ acres (assuming the scaling is linear.. which it should be close) That's pretty impressive.

[1] Source for the 1 tbsp = 1/2 acre or 2 tbsp = 1 acre.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2H418M3V6M

The original experiment by Ben Franklin claimed 1 tsp per 1/2 acre
http://www.rsc.org/learn-chemistry/content/filerepository/CMP/00/000/687/isms-9.pdf?v=1399160447243

And if anyone has young ones and wants to do the olive oil molecular size experiment here's a short procedure. It might be fun to do a comparison of different oils molecular size
http://practicalphysics.org/estimating-size-molecule-using-oil-film.html