I’m not very good at painting. But this is mostly because I’ve never really done much besides slap paint on a canvas or paper without much sense of what I’m doing. No time like the present to learn, right? One has to start somewhere.

Milk Paint is a non-toxic paint made with casein (milk protein) and lime or borax. Its earliest documented use comes from a stone tool dating to about 49,000 years ago, where a bit of milk paint was found clinging to a stone axe head with an ochre — probably from the painting of the wooden axe handle or the bindings joining the head to the handle. Most of the bright colors on wooden objects from Pharaoh Tutankhamun’s tomb, were produced using a lacquer-ized milk paint, as well — almost 3,400 years ago. In the Roman Empire and in medieval Europe and in the Islamicate world there were industrial shops churning out large quantities of milk paint powder for sale, too — and its bright colors and smooth finishes proved more popular in peasant communities than highly polished veneers and marquetry, from Scandinavia to Shanghai. Milk paint works best on porous surfaces like wood, of course. I think it’s beautiful.

First Try: Friday

I started mixing up some milk paint in an empty Bonne Maman jam jar. The basic recipe is one part water to one part milk paint powder, and a jam jar nicely holds about 2/3s of a cup — 1/3 water, 1/3 milk paint. It was enough paint to cover the Fall Front of the chest with just a little bit left over, with one coat. I plan to do two more coats, I think, based on the photographs below. At a distance, the fall front looks great, but up close you can see the streaking and ribbony effects.

This is “Federal Blue” in the Old Fashioned Genuine Milk Paint line from MilkPaint.com — later this year, Lost Art Press is coming out with a book on making milk paint at home in small quantities. And the author, Nick Kroll, brags that it’s as easy as making macaroni and cheese, and about as cheap. I look forward to learning that process I had this bag of commercial milk paint powder left over from an earlier project (that I started but didn’t finish, and so didn’t use the paint). I figured that I’d best learn how to work with it before I learned how to make it.

It wasn’t hard — tape the parts of the surface that you don’t want to have paint on them. Put the tape on first, because milk paint starts spoiling almost as soon as you make it. You want to be done with the prep work before you turn it into liquid. Double check that you’ve covered all the right things, and not covered the parts you do want to have painted. Then, dump 1/3 of a cup of milk paint powder into a jar. Dump 1/3 of a cup of water into the same jar. Put the lid on tightly, and shake for 2 minutes. Take the lid off, and start spreading paint with a broad brush. The paint starts drying and thickening and souring almost as soon as you uncap the jar — I guess oxidization is part of the process? And then, one way or another, you have a painted surface and a jar with a little bit of dried milk paint clinging to the walls. You can add a bit more water and get a little more paint and get the jar almost clean, or you can call it a day. An hour later, you’re supposed to be able to put on a second coat… but I ran out of daylight before I could do that.

One thing I really liked about working with this, is how easy it was to clean up. The jar and the brush both rinsed completely clean with just water, and there’s no remaining mess or residue.

I’m pleased, the morning after, with my first coat, but I think I’ll do a second coat this afternoon. I am interested in the answers to two questions though —

1. Can I put an additional finish, like paste wax, on top of the milk paint, for a glossier and smoother finish? it appears that I can and probably should, for a more durable finish.
2. Should I apply a finish to the interior parts of the cabinet? Yeah, but maybe paste wax is enough, and maybe not until after I’ve built the interior furniture/tool holding systems.

There is a third question that answered itself almost as soon as I checked the finish this morning: should I sand between coats, or at the end? And the answer is that I should sand as the end of the process of painting, just before the paste wax coating, rather than in between each coat. Maybe that’s silly, but I think it’s likely to yield a better project at the end.

Second Try: Saturday

I put a second coat of paint on, late Saturday afternoon. This time I mixed 4/3s of a cup of paint: 2/3s of a cup of water, and 2/3s of a cup of paint powder. This was enough to put a second coat on the door, and a first coat on the front, sides, and bottom of the chest. You can see the results below. Some of this is obscured at the moment by the presence of blue painters tape protecting the interior of the chest, and the wooden ledger strip on the top of the chest, and the oak battens on the lid.

But I’m thinking that it’s starting to look the way I imagined it would — A blue chest with a slant-top with an oak ledger strip, and a plain wood interior. I still don’t know if I should apply paste wax to the non-painted surfaces, really, but I haven’t gotten a decisive answer from re-reading the book or looking online for answers.

When I compare the first coat on the chest, with the second coat on the fall front, I don’t detect too much of a difference.The second coat is a little more velvety, and seems a bit more uniform. There are splotchy bits on the sides of the chest, though, where it’s streaky and thin. A second coat is definitely desirable. Maybe a third?

I do have the intention of carving some parts of the chest with designs similar to what’s found in the book American Peasant by Christopher Schwarz. Those systems of lines and arcs are really compelling, and speak to me of the geometric processes that are found in George Walker and Jim Tolpin’s book By Hand and Eye. I’m also deeply fond of Andrew Sutton’s book Ruler And Compass produced by Wooden Books, which details 140+ geometric constructions for everything from parallel lines and perpendiculars, to the secrets of the heptagon. Maybe that’s what belongs on my chest, various geometric proofs? It couldn’t be worse than seals of Solomon, right? That said, I don’t feel up to carving any of the pentacles of Solomon on my chest, despite the magical associations. I think geometric proofs, or simple abstract designs, are probably better for my purposes.

I still need to paint the mobile base, which means unloading it (it currently contains all the tools that should be in the chest, stuffed hugga-mugga), and also the back of the chest needs a first coat. I think a second coat all around is needed.