# White chalk for Milk Paint?



## WanderingOak

I am trying out a 1870's recipe for milk paint, and am having a problem locating ingredients. It involves miking a quart of skim milk with 1 oz of pickling lime, then thickening the mixture with powdered chalk. According to the 'home improvement' stores, the only type of chalk available anywhere is the colored type for chalk lines. That if fine, if I want red or blue milk paint, but it won't work it I want plain white milk paint. I tried some sporting good stores, but they don't carry it either, while the summer help at Sherwin Williams looked at me as if I was a space alien. It seems to me that there should be a source for white chalk somewhere. I know that Amazon caries it, but I would much rather find a local source.


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## Wisconsin Ann

The chalk your recipe refers to would be limestone chalk...like the white cliff's of dover. It's not the same as what they use as "chalk" in the modern world. It's actually calcite (calcium carbonate)...the chalks now are magnesium carbonate or calcium sulfate (gypsum)

Calcium carbonate is also known as "ag lime"  The stuff you sweeten soil with.

so. try your feed store  or gardening center.

In paint supply places, it's often referred to as "whiting".


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## Wisconsin Ann

http://www.earthpigments.com/Casein/milk-lime-paint.cfm is a pretty good site for showing how to make the stuff.


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## glazed

I've been researching this as well, and also have the 1870 recipe.

Then I started looking into flour paint, and it seems like it might be easier, and even less caustic. Supposedly, flour paint is among the simplest and most versatile of all homemade paints. It can be applied to most interior surfaces, and the proportions don't have to be as exact as for other kinds of paint. You can use many types of grain flour as the binder, but wheat flour is the most common choice.

But, the jury is still out ... (on the researching) ... and, actually, this is the fun part to me.

Anyway, most of our fillers we will probably have to find through a art supply company/store.

Unless we have natural clay in our soil.


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## WanderingOak

Wisconsin Ann said:


> http://www.earthpigments.com/Casein/milk-lime-paint.cfm is a pretty good site for showing how to make the stuff.


Many thanks. I will start working with that recipe tonight. My first attempt was with powdered milk and lime, and all I got was very milky yellowish-water that didn't brush at all and stank to high heaven. I tried with fresh milk and lime today, and got the same results, only it wasn't yellowish and didn't stink. It looks like curdling the milk first, and rinsing off the whey could be the way to go. I'm not surprised that my first attempts didn't work, since I got the recipe from a website that was trying to sell me milk paint mix (which probably does work quite well, although it is also very expensive)...


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## Cyngbaeld

Check out a ceramics supply dealer in your area. THere is one in Austin that carries a surprising array of things. I found dolomite there for the goats.


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## Wisconsin Ann

Ceramics supply places have loads of unusual things  Pigments like the ochres, iron oxide (yellow, red, black), cobalt, coppers. whiting. bunches of chemicals (dried types) that are used for making glazes or thining clays, etc.
You'll find bentonite there (that's another thing used for thickening paint). 

You do know that the only thing that will remove milk paint from wood is sanding,right? Just sayin'....  The last layer of paint that I had to remove from the woodwork in this house in the original parlor was milk paint. NOTHING touched it. Even the harshest of the chemical paint peelers and the heat gun didn't work. So be REALLY sure you want your object painted


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## WanderingOak

Wisconsin Ann said:


> You do know that the only thing that will remove milk paint from wood is sanding,right? Just sayin'....  The last layer of paint that I had to remove from the woodwork in this house in the original parlor was milk paint. NOTHING touched it. Even the harshest of the chemical paint peelers and the heat gun didn't work. So be REALLY sure you want your object painted


I'm toying with the idea of making traditional American pine furniture. It was usually finished with milk paint. Also, I was able to find some grungy old pine cabinets with a walnut stain on the curb that cleaned up nice, but they need a few coats of paint to lighten the color up a bit.


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## Wisconsin Ann

OOOOOOOO!!!! That sounds wonderful  Milk paint goes on thin, and is supposed to soak in and seal up the wood. I'd think that would be PERFECT for pine furniture! You know that look the decorators keep trying to get?....the furniture that's been painted and then they sand it off so it looks kind of old and worn but cool? Well, the originals for the idea are the old furniture with milkpaint which over DECADES some corners rub off.

You must post some pictures when you get things going!  I love people who have the patience to make furniture, or refinish pieces.


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## CamM

I've read recipes that only require milk and lime, though I don't have any practice with milk paint, so I wouldn't know the difference between chalked and un-chalked.


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## WanderingOak

Well, I found out the hard way that un-pigmented milk paint gives a transparent glaze, which might be useful, but it isn't paint. I looked high and low to find a local source for powdered pigments, and at first, I thought all was lost. There are no art supply stores within fifty miles, and even the colleges which have hundreds of art majors didn't have anything available on campus. Then, I read Cyngbaeld's and Wisconsin Ann's posts about ceramic suppliers, and was able to find a pottery studio in Syracuse that was slightly over an hour's drive away. They had Titanium Dioxide for about six bux a pound, a lot less than online, and about the same price (minus shipping) if you factor in four gallons of gas. I just finished applying my first test-coat, and so far, it looks pretty good (although I was painting over a milk-paint 'glaze'). I used the recipe  here and didn't use chalk. I did goof slightly by not mixing the pigment into a paste first, but with enough stirring it finally became a suspension.


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## WanderingOak

After several days of experimentation, I think I am finally on to something. My first batches of milk paint were very thin and watery. They didn't coat very well, had a habit of puddling on the surfaces that I was painting, didn't stick to every surface (powdered off after drying), and dripped everywhere. So, I went back to square one, and evaluated every step of the process. I experimented with powdered milk, but while it was thicker, it didn't coat anywhere near as well. A local homebrew store has real cheese cloth (for steeping herbs), rather than the thin open-weave junk that is sold as cheese cloth today. I tried reducing the amount of water used, and that helped some. Then, I picked up a $4.00 thrift-store blender (why should I risk my vitamix with paint?), and that made all of the difference.

Here is what I did. I let four cups of milk curdle overnight at room temperature with half a cup of vinegar. I then lined a colander with REAL cheese cloth and drained the whey off, then rinsed the vinegar out of the remaining quark. I put the quark (about 1-1/2 cups) in the blender along with 28g of pickling lime and 50g of titanium dioxide (white pigment). I did NOT add water (aside from whatever was left in the quark after rinsing). I then blended the whole mess together for about a minute, and poured the results into a coffee can. The resulting paint was considerably thicker than the un-blended variety, and it coated better than the original or the powdered milk blends. The only thing I might do differently is put the lime and pigment in the blender first next time, so they will mix in better with the cheap blender that I'm using.

The paint should be dry tomorrow, so I will post an update to let y'all know how it turned out.


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## Cyngbaeld

Sounds neat. I made a lime wash and put it on a section of wall, but it was really hard to get on. After it was on though, it slowly hardened, even though the first few days it seemed powdery, like it was not going to stick. What is really impressive is that it does not mildew. The walls I painted with latex tend to mildew in the heat and humidity.


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## WanderingOak

The new mix works pretty well. If you are going to refinish furniture with milk paint, you should remove all of the old finish first, otherwise milk paint will not stick. I didn't sand enough with the cabinets that I am refinishing, and have to re-sand certain areas now.


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## Wisconsin Ann

That makes sense....there's no real "binder" like there is in oil paints or acrylics....it's more of a "sink into the pores of the wood" kind of thing. Glad to hear you've found a mix that's working well for you, and I sure hope you'll have some pictures to share


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