Hi

After experiencing problems like those of Alan, I keep mine in a wide-mouthed jar with a screw top lid which I think once contained pickled onions. I keep the jar on a shelf and don't tip it so the oil never gets up to the screw thread or the lid. When I want some oil I get the jar down carefully and open it carefully and take some oil out with a stick or a paint brush without letting any oil touch the lip of the jar. It's a little cumbersome but it works well as I only seem to need a small amount of oil at a time. If I needed more oil at at a time I would see if I could find a pipette or similar. This was never a problem back in the days of glass bottles and real corks!

Rod

Glass bottles with real corks are still available, you just have to drink the contents first. For some reason I find single malt bottles the most satisfying to use.

Adrian

Reminds me of my ironmongers apprentice days in the 50's. We sold loose raw liseed oil, boiled linseed oil, turps sub, genuine turps, creosote and meths, all in 45 gallon barrels, the linsed oil was always the messy slow running one to use. There were also 2 x 1000 gallon paraffin tanks in the leanto, so it was quite a messy area with leakages and spillage! The shop was sold in the early nineties, and the area redeveloped into a shopping mall, bet they had contamination issues!

Apart from the polythene/cling film thing which i also use all the time ,very handy for coffee jars etc… You could also use the old trick of putting clean glass marbles or something in the container to bring the level up and get rid of excess air. Linseed oil and particularly the boiled type (which in your case will be not boiled but with metallic driers added ) is very prone to setting in air contact. Though it never really drys hard and is usually easily peeled of the screw threads with a fingernail or something.