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TallahasseeTung Oil

About our oil

You believe in quality and craftsmanship. So do we.

Our family has spent years on the art and the science of growing tung trees and turning their fruit into an oil worth your labor.

Freshness matters

Most tung oil has crossed an ocean before you open it.

Other brands may be bottled in the United States, but the oil itself comes mainly from China — traveling thousands of miles through swings of temperature and humidity. By the time it is bottled here, imported tung oil can be several years old, and age changes how it applies, how it dries, and what you end up with.

Because ours is fresh, it applies smoothly, dries evenly, lasts longer on your shelf, and mixes better with your own blend. Every can is labeled with its harvest date and processing date, and comes with a certificate of analysis from an independent laboratory alongside our signed guarantee of purity.

Diagram of how far imported tung oil travels before it reaches you
The route imported tung oil takes between the seed and the shelf. The name on the bottle is usually not the company that pressed it.
Diagram comparing mechanical and solvent extraction of tung seed
The two ways tung oil gets out of the seed. Mechanical pressing recovers around 70% of the available oil and uses no solvent; solvent extraction recovers upwards of 95% using hexane. We only do the first one.

We grow it. We press it. We stand behind it.

Four things we can prove

  • 01

    Grown on our farm

    Every batch starts with tung trees grown and harvested on our own farms along the Gulf Coast. Not bought on the bulk market. Not blended from four continents.

  • 02

    Screw-pressed for purity

    Ripe tung nuts are collected, prepped, and mechanically pressed. No hexane, no solvents, no chemical extraction at any stage.

  • 03

    Lab-verified

    Every batch is backed by a certificate of analysis from an independent testing laboratory, referenced by the batch number on your container.

  • 04

    Dated and traceable

    Every container carries its harvest date, its press date, and a signed guarantee of purity. You can tell how old your oil is by reading the label.

USDA Certified Biobased Product label: product 100%, FP

Certified September 3, 2026

A USDA Certified Biobased Product, measured at 100%.

Tallahassee Tung Oil has earned the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Certified Biobased Product Label. To earn it, the oil was tested by an independent laboratory for the USDA BioPreferred® Program, which uses radiocarbon analysis to measure how much of a product comes from plants rather than from petroleum. Ours measured 100%.

For you, it is one more way to know that what is in the can is tung oil and nothing else: an oil thinned with petroleum distillates could not measure 100%. The letters FP on the label mean it also qualifies for federal purchasing preference.

See the certificate (PDF)About the USDA BioPreferred Program

From our orchard to your bench

Five stages, and nothing added at any of them

This is the whole process. There is no chemical step we are leaving out.
01

Grown

Tung trees in our own orchards along the Gulf Coast. We know how each orchard produces and what the season did to it.

02

Harvested

Nuts are left to ripen and drop, then gathered and brought in — hulls, shells and all.

03

Cracked and sorted

Hulls come off, shells are cracked, and the kernels are separated out on the sorting deck.

04

Screw-pressed

Kernels go through a mechanical screw press. No hexane, no solvent recovery, no blending of extracted streams.

05

Tested and dated

A sample goes to an independent laboratory. The batch number, harvest date and press date go on the can.

Our own mill

Harvest goes straight from our rows to our press.

Nothing is stored in a port or shipped across an ocean. The harvest comes in off the orchard, the nuts are hulled and cracked on site, and the kernels go through our own screw press — which is why we can put a harvest date and a press date on the label and mean both of them.
The mill buildings and the surrounding orchard, seen from the air
The mill, with the orchard it serves running off in every direction.
  • Tractor and harvester, waiting at the edge of the orchard.
    Tractor and harvester, waiting at the edge of the orchard.
  • Nuts tumbling from the harvester gate.
    Nuts tumbling from the harvester gate.
  • An operator at the mill, from above.
    An operator at the mill, from above.
  • A cracked nut, opened by hand to check the kernel.
    A cracked nut, opened by hand to check the kernel.
Close grain of a board finished with tung oil

Uncompromised beauty and protection

It goes into the wood, not onto it.

Tung oil has a long tradition among people who know wood and want a beautiful finish — and it seals stone and concrete too. Chemical-free 100% tung oil penetrates the fibres evenly, creating a waterproof seal that stands up to spills and wear. Three or four coats give a satin sheen that beautifies the wood and pops the grain.

Applying tung oil

How we do it

There are many choices for wood finishes, and plenty of debate about which is best. We'll leave that debate alone and just tell you our opinion on applying ours.
  1. 01

    Sand and clean

    Sand the surface to the smoothness you want — usually around 180 or 220 grit — and remove all the sanding dust.

  2. 02

    Wipe on sparingly

    Wipe on a 50/50 blend of tung oil and citrus solution with a lint-free cloth. Let it soak in for a few minutes, then rub vigorously with a clean cloth until no oil is standing on the surface. This matters: it is what gets the oil into the wood instead of leaving a sticky mess on top of it. On cutting boards and kitchen utensils, use our food-grade citrus solution.

  3. 03

    Wait, then repeat

    Apply the second coat after about 24 hours, the same 50/50 blend, the same way. How long you should actually wait depends on your temperature and humidity.

  4. 04

    Build the finish

    Three or four coats is usual. Tallahassee Tung Oil dries to the touch in four to five hours depending on your oil-to-solution ratio, and cures completely in two to three weeks when applied correctly.

  5. 05

    Take the compliments

    Enjoy how the finish pops the grain, and take some pride in making something that will last for generations.

When using any tung oil, follow general safety guidance — including how to store used rags.

The tung oil legacy

This was once a Gulf Coast industry.

Tung oil has protected wood for over two thousand years, from ancient Chinese boats to modern eco-friendly homes. For a few decades in the twentieth century it was grown right here, across the belt from Texas to Florida — and then it very nearly disappeared.
Farm Credit Administration map, Location of Tung Oil Trees in the United States, 1940
Farm Credit Administration, 1940. Every dot is five thousand tung trees. Our orchards sit inside this map.

Order soon — we have limited quantities.

We only sell what our own trees produce, so when a season runs out, it runs out.

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