I have used linseed oil for a few years (not long enough to know whether it works, I suppose).
Doing the main tubes is easy if you have an accommodating family - just get a litre bottle of linseed oil, pour it down the tubes whilst holding the bike over the bathtub. Scoop up the oil that drips out and keep pouring it back in whilst turning the frame over - repeat until you're sure the oil has covered all of the internals of the frame.
Doing the chainstays and forks is a little more difficult. What I do is get an empty 500ml contact-lens solution bottle (tough flexible plastic with a tiny little nozzle), suck up linseed oil with it, then place it in hot water which makes the oil much runnier. Then poke the little nozzle inside all the holes and squeeze all the oil into the stay/fork until it's full - then once it has mostly dribbled out, suck it up again and do the other stay/fork and so on.
Thin straw-coloured linseed oil is excellent for stopping corrosion on bare-steel frames, too (always popular with BMXers). The thick boiled linseed oil works just as well but it has a yellowy tinge.
You could do this outside but then you're going to waste most of the oil. The bathroom only stinks for a day, anyway.
Doing the main tubes is easy if you have an accommodating family - just get a litre bottle of linseed oil, pour it down the tubes whilst holding the bike over the bathtub. Scoop up the oil that drips out and keep pouring it back in whilst turning the frame over - repeat until you're sure the oil has covered all of the internals of the frame.
Doing the chainstays and forks is a little more difficult. What I do is get an empty 500ml contact-lens solution bottle (tough flexible plastic with a tiny little nozzle), suck up linseed oil with it, then place it in hot water which makes the oil much runnier. Then poke the little nozzle inside all the holes and squeeze all the oil into the stay/fork until it's full - then once it has mostly dribbled out, suck it up again and do the other stay/fork and so on.
Thin straw-coloured linseed oil is excellent for stopping corrosion on bare-steel frames, too (always popular with BMXers). The thick boiled linseed oil works just as well but it has a yellowy tinge.
You could do this outside but then you're going to waste most of the oil. The bathroom only stinks for a day, anyway.