Are Your Oil-Based DIY Products Drying Out? – Bloxygen to the Rescue!

Hey peeps! So, how many of you have bought a can of Gel Stain, done an amazing project, then gone to open it up at a later time for a new project and BAM…the can is stuck, hard to get open, and when you do, the product is all dried out???

Wahhhhhh! It’s happened to us more than a few times and we started getting lots of complaints about the issue from our customers too. Here’s a couple of our cans looking pretty thick & yucky. We usually get out a plastic knife and start stabbing away to peel off the layer that’s dried out.

Why does that happen? Let me get a little scientific on you for a second. So oxygen is what makes the Gel Stain start to “dry”. When you close your can after a use, naturally, there is oxygen inside of it. That oxygen hits the top layer and right away starts to cure it. The longer the can sits unopened, the longer that oxygen has to continue to cure more and more of the can.

So how do we fix it? That’s always my question whenever we encounter a problem with our products. And I’m here to share with you, we found a solution!! BLOXYGEN to the rescue!! This is such a cool product and sooooo super useful! Not just for your DIY products, but…well I’ll share that in a minute ; )

I’ll get a little more scientific on you, but stick with me. We need to remove the oxygen from the can to avoid thickened product or a skin that forms on the top. By spraying Bloxygen inside the can before you close it, it pushes the oxygen out and replaces it with argon, an inert gas that is heavier than oxygen and naturally occurring in our air.

Any remaining oxygen that might be left in the can rises to the top and sits on top of the argon. The argon protects the product for years and will never ever allow the curing process to start. Unless of course, you open it for the next project ; )

OK, so does that make sense? Once we got our cans in stock, I did a little research on argon because the can says Bloxygen can also work on things other than oil-based products. It can also work on food! I wondered if argon was safe for food and low and behold, it is. It’s actually used in the food industry to protect products from oxidizing.

First thing we thought of here, Avocados! I have to give credit to John for this one…he got the brilliant idea to spray Bloxygen inside a storage container after cutting one open, 2 days later, it looked like this. You all know how an avocado looks after it’s exposed to air for a short period of time. The proof was in the pudding on this one for me. Bloxygen also says it works on wine, cooking oils, nuts, coffee beans & any kind of oil-based DIY product. You DO NOT want to use Bloxygen on water based finishes. So never, ever in Chalk Paint®.

Here’s a shot of one of our pieces done with Gray Gel Stain & Van Dyke Brown Glaze. We love our Gel Stain products and now we love them even more since they’re going to last way longer!!!

No more bagging up our Gel Stains & fighting with lids…woohoo! Thank you Bloxygen!

We’ll be posting a video on exactly how to use Bloxygen and we’ll be posting it HERE, on our YouTube Channel. So be sure to subscribe for the latest How-To’s! See you soon!