voiceover:the woodwhisperer is brought to you by powermatic "the goldstandard since 1921" and by rockler woodworking and hardware "create with confidence" (cheerful music) marc:okay, so the reason i wanted to do a live session in thefirst place aside from like i said earlier justhanging out with everybody and catching up with peopleis that the fact that
there are a significantnumber of new users to the site and that kindof was what caused our crushing blow to our server that caused us to have to move so now thatwe're on this new server hopefully everything will be okay, but the point is there werejust a lot of new users. i don't know what's in the water. i don't know what's going around, but there's a lot of people
who want to learn how to do woodworking so i thought it would be cool to go back and visit some of the basics and some of the things that a lot of us may already know, you know, it might be okay to review these things, but oil finishes and oil-based finishes are one of the firstthings you kind of confront as a new woodworker as a potential finish
to use in your shop. it's really durable, it's easy to apply, it's got a very small learning curve so it's a great optionand the problem with it is there's a lot of confusionout there in terms of labelling, what's an oil,what's an oil varnished blend, what's just diluted varnish,how do these things work, what's more protective, and i just wanted to reviewthat stuff with you guys.
so without further adieulet's jump into it. okay, so the first thing i wanted to talk about are oils because essentially inthe world of oil finishes there's like two extremes. there's the simple,extremely easy to apply, but unfortunately not verydurable type of finish and that's your oils your straight oils. they go on really easy,there's zero learning curve
because you literally justflood it onto the surface, let it soak in, wipe theexcess off and you're done, but the problem with that finish is that it's not very protective. it doesn't block very much moisture and it certainly doesn't do a darn thing for blocking abrasion soyou drop something on it you're going to dent it if the wood is soft enough to be dented so.
hold on. the laptop just went dark. why do you do that laptop? i hate you. it was my energy settings. so when we look at theworld of oil finishes essentially you've got two things in the world of woodworking. one is boiled linseed oil and the other is tung oil which i don't happen to have right now.
i usually just buy these big containers of the boiled linseed oil it'sjust cheap and easy to find. both of these will befound in varying quantities and in different forms ina lot of different finishes that we confront, but justknow that these are really the only two that you're going to find. a boiled linseed oil likei said it's easy to get. home depot and lowe's carry this stuff. it's pretty cheap and for the most part
there's not a huge difference between boiled linseed oil and tung oil. there are very slight differences. for instance, boiled linseed oil adds a little bit more of anamber color to the wood. tung oil is a little bit clearer. it doesn't quite amber upthe wood quite as much, but as a result if you'redoing something like popping the grain and you want that color
to assist in that sort of popping reaction boiled linseed oil isprobably your best bet because it brings the mostcolor to the situation, but tung oil is generallyconsidered to be the better quality of the two oils. in reality to you and meit really doesn't make a whole lot of difference. you might wind up paying for money for the tung oil, too, soyou're just better off,
in my opinion goingwith boiled linseed oil. now to talk a little bit about terminology boiled linseed oil wellin the past from what i understand it used to be boiled and it was something thatwould help the oil cure. by giving it that heat exposure it would sort of polymerize itand get it to a point that when you lay it on the surface it doesn't take days to dry.
well nowadays they do that chemically. they add driers to the oil and that's what helps it cure quickly. now when you buy tungoil you want to make sure and see this is where things get crazy. we'll talk about some ofthe marketing crap later, but tung oil is somethingwhere, for instance this says tung oil finish. well that's pretty confusing because
the problem is it's not pure tung oil. so when you are looking for pure tung oil you absolutely must lookfor that terminology. it has to say pure tungoil or else it's not so in general though i thinkrockler is a good source. they have some tung oil. i think - well there's probably a number of places. i always seem to get mine at rockler whenever i can get it on sale,
but like i said most ofthe time boiled linseed oil is the one that i prefer to use. like i said though generally i consider it to be an inferior finish. something like a workbench where you want a little bit of moisture protection you can't stop a workbenchfrom being dented no matter what you do to it. so something like boiled linseed oil is
a great option because it's easy to fix, easy to renew and you're justfighting an uphill battle if you coat your workbench with a film because you're just goingto have to scrape it all off or plane it all off and,you know, retreat it later so tools, you know, toolhandles, workbenches, cutting boards, these are all places where you use an oil that doesn'tbuild up to a thick film. so it's kind of funny it's almost -
it doesn't seem to make sense. the things that are goingto get beat up the most are the things that you really are just kind of giving in and saying look, i know it's going to get beat up so repairing and refreshing the surface is more important to me so let me just use the boiled linseed oil for the most part. look at me i'm allorganized with my notes.
so on the other side you have varnish. so varnish is sort of the other extreme. it's a full fledged film. it's, you know, can look really uglyif you put too much on at least in my opinion, but it's extremely protective. it's gonna stop water oranything from penetrating the surface and it has that nice hard film so you drop your keys on a table
it's not going to dent and it protects the wood that lies underneath. you know, before i go too much further i guess we should answer the question. what's the differencebetween oil and varnish. how do you go from oil to varnish? essentially, to grossly simplify it if you take boiled linseed oil you add a solid resin and you put in some thinner
and then you heat it all up it actually changes tovarnish so to compromise now. varnish really protectivenot the best looking it it's, you know, put on really thick and then oil on the other side is what most of us would consider really beautiful for thewood, but not very protective. so a good compromise isan oil varnish blend. you can make your ownor you can buy them in
sort of commercial varieties. i've got a few examples here. most danish oils thatyou see on the market are really an oil varnish blend meaning they took somethingthat was pretty much pure varnish, they addedoil, linseed oil, tung oil, depends on the brand and the mixture and they thin it out a little bit so that it's easier toapply to the surface
and typically the thinner is either naptha or mineral spirits. so if you make your own a lot of you guys probably already know this formula it's basically thirds it's 1/3 oil, either boiled linseed oilor tung oil, 1/3 varnish. and in this case this is already - i don't want to confuse things, but arm-r-seal is alreadydiluted for wiping.
its been diluted approximately 50% of what you would normally get. so let's say something like this minwax fast-drying polythis is full strength. so you would say 1/3 oil,1/3 full strength varnish or polyurethane and then you would have - my mineral spirits is in the closet, but 1/3 mineral spirits and that gives you a nice loose mixture that you can apply
to the surface, it absorbs deeply and you get the best of both worlds. it's not a super thick finish that builds up to a heavy film. i guess you could if youkeep applying multiple coats, but it kind of givesyou that compromise of a film finish protectionwith the beauty of a close to the wood finish. so certainly something to consider when
you're looking for the ideal finish. i think it also goes up in difficulty in terms of application, but oils are the easiest to apply. you just flood it and wipe it off, but as soon as you add somevarnish to that mixture it tends to dry a little faster. the finished application getsa little bit more finicky, you know, so you have to decide how far
you want to take it andthe varnish at the top, well when you lay down varnish it needs to be perfect, you know, because otherwise you're gonna see steaks and things like that so you sort of work your way up in terms of difficulty of application. so i've got a few good examples here. like i said the watco danish oil,
the minwax tung oilfinish is a little bit - pretty much an oil varnish blend. something like this the arm-r-seal we talked about that acouple of seconds ago. arm-r-seal is not an oil varnish blend despite the labelling. minwax poly, of course, or anything like spar varnish and things like that those are pretty much just pure varnishes.
okay, so here's where themarketing stuff comes in. you will find a lot of finishes out there labelled tung oil finish. the problem is tung oil finish really means nothing more thana finish that gives you the look of somethingthat was perhaps treated with tung oil so it's avery subjective phrase. a very subjective term and, you know, could mean two differentthings for the most part
in terms of what we buy in a store. it could mean a true oil varnish blend like one of these guys or it could mean a diluted varnish what they would call a wiping varnish. both of those technicallywhen applied to the surface very lightly can give youa tung oil like finish and that's why you will seethe term tung oil finish and that's why you'll alsosee the word oil on here
because i don't know whether it's just - i'm sure they've done studies and they know what sells. it's their product so they found that if you put oil on thelabel it sells better than if you just call it polyurethane like this one is called, but the reality is thisis just a diluted varnish and these two actually do contain oil.
so how do we see pastthe marketing jargon? i've been messing with this glove and i don't really need it yet. the idea is to first of all - i want you to read the label obviously you need to know what you're buying, but then ignore it becausewhat you really need to do is look at the back of the can. you could also look at the msds.
it's the material safety data sheet and that kind of tells you what the ingredients are that go into it. it can get a little bit technical in there and some are more informative than others, but the back of the can can give you some very simple clues to tellyou what's in this mix to let you know if it'sjust diluted varnish or it there's actuallysome oil in that mixture
so one of the first things i look at is the way that they tell you to apply it. okay, if the can says flood the surface and let it soak for 10minutes to a half-hour to even, you know, an hour in some cases. if it says a really long soaking period then come back and wipe the finish off. there's no way that that's pure varnish or diluted varnish, sorry,
the diluted varnish woulddry and tack up in that time there's no way you could apply it, let it soak in for 20minutes and come back and wipe it with a rag it'sjust not going to happen. so you'll find thatthese oil varnish blends will always have a soak in period because the oil in there meansthat's it not going to dry. it's gonna take a lot longer to cure so you can get away with that.
the other thing is, ofcourse, the total drying time. if the can says to recoat - let me see what arm-r-seal tells you what you can do. if it says that you could recoat within like an hour or 2 or even 6 hours you're dealing with varnish, okay, because varnish dries within that timeframe generally a couple hours to, of course,
depending on your temperature, humidity and things like that, butthe oil varnish blends most times will have youwait overnight to 24 hours before doing anything elseto the surface because again it just takes thatmuch longer to cure. so application and drying time are 2 clues that will always - well i guess there may be some exceptions. i should never say always,
but 99% of the time it will clue you in onto exactly what's inthat can just by the way that they tell you to apply it and, of course, check themsds if you really want to get into the details ofexactly what's in that can. now if you're still confused if you're not absolutely sure you read some crap on the internet that tells you one thing, you're confused,
the one test that always seems to work and it's, you know, very easy to do is to get a non-porous surface - i think i may have doneeven an article on this at one point. let's assume this is like plate glass. i have a nice square blockof glass that i use for this. take a couple drops of your finish drop it down on there.
it's got to be non-porousso it just beads up. let it dry overnight. if it dries and it'swrinkly its got oil in it. it's one of these it'san oil varnish blend. if it just dries to a complete solid layer and there's really nowrinkles at all to it it's just diluted varnish and that's kind of a failsafe way to do a test. for me personally you guyshave seen me talk about
arm-r-seal constantly imean it's something that i - it's absolutely one ofmy favorite finishes and it really is nothingmore than a diluted varnish. the reason i like it is ithink that the quality of the resins that were usedto make this are better than the quality of resins used to make the minwax stuff. it may be just personal opinion, but when i see a finish made with this
it reminds me more of afinely lacquered surface and when i see this stuff it basically just to me looks like plastic. now another thing you may want to look a little bit deeper intowhen you are looking at just the world of varnishes you might want to pay attention to what resins are inside that varnish. the resin is really the deciding component
for how the finish isgoing to act and look depending on whether it'sphenolic or an alkyd resin or in this case polyurethane resin so then that's a good point. a lot of people want to know what is the difference betweenpolyurethane and varnish. well essentially varnish is sort of like the umbrella term and polyurethane is just one of a number ofdifferent types of varnish
so polyurethane is justa different type of resin and basically in wood finishing for the most part there are 3 resins. there's polyurethane, there are the class of alkyd resins and then there's phenolic resins. so i think and some people will probably agree with me that thealkyd and phenolic resins generally look morepleasant and less plastiky
than your urethane resins so you'll find that a lot of the finishes, for instance, i think arm-r-seal - i can't remember which one it is, but it's a mixture of both urethane and phenolic resins if i'm not mistaken. it might even say back here. nope, it's alkyd resin. i get the two confused all the time,
but it's a mixture so that may be what my eye is seeing is the difference between pure poly andbasically a hybrid mixture of poly and an alkyd resin. all right, let's do some questions y'all. i can see the chat from here so - hit me with it y'all. well you know gun stocks you could find - i know there are forumsout there dedicated
to how to treat finishand handle gun stocks because, you know, people like to get picky about that stuff. i know like tried & trueoil and there are actually gun stock oil companies out there that specifically make gun stock finishes. i know from what i've seen a lot look up tried & true oil, butdefinitely do some research and talk to the peoplewho know guns because
i don't know much about them so i don't want to steer you the wrong way. you might want to treatgun stocks differently than you would treat a piece of furniture. okay, harfoot or harfoo ii, harfoo t - i'm gonna butchereverybody's name tonight. how can you make yoursoft pine table hard? you can cover it with hard maple and that will make it hard.
if you're just looking to coat it with a finish that's durablethat will, you know, give it a little bitmore longevity, you know, polyurethane is certainlya great way to do it. there are finishes out there that i haven't had a chanceto really experiment with that embed sort of likean epoxy finish into the wood fibres that will do just that they sort of harden the surface
and it's great for outdoor furniture because it really makes it impenetrable. now we talked about thisin the guild in the past and it's called the onethat i know of is cpes. look up on jamestowndistributors.com they sell a product called cpes and it's basically a 2-part epoxy that you mix together. it's very thin epoxy, youlet it soak into the wood
and after, you know, iguess 12 hours, 24 hours, sand it lightly and then hit it with a few coats of varnish and polyurethane whatever your choice is and it does a number on the wood and makes it really, really protected. so now i know that's goodfor outdoor furniture. i haven't played with ittoo much on interior stuff, but if i had a really softwood table, for instance,
that i wanted to protect that might not be a bad option. chris asked why did i dilute the salad bowl finishwith mineral spirits? okay, so here's the theory behind that and mind you this isonly my personal theory and what i think makes the most sense for my cutting boards. since it's all end-grain
the cutting board isextremely thirsty. right? we're just talking abut the end-grain. it really sucks in finish so what i like to do istake salad bowl finish which is really just varnish, in fact, general finishes' salad bowl finish is really just one of their other products in a different can, but they, you know, well let's not get into that.
that's also an assumption on my part, but let's call it an educated guess. it's really just varnishso what i like to do is thin it out because athinner finish absorbs deeper so what i like to do is thin it - i forget what i said in the video, but usually i thin it about 50% more than i've already used in the can, flood it onto the surfaceand keep applying it.
let it soak up as much as it wants to and then when i flip the board over and i see it's peeking out the other end i put the board up on the side, i wipe both sides clean with a dry rag so there's no excess on the surface and then at that point ijust let it dry overnight. what i'm trying to do isto get that thin varnish to dry inside the grain.
now if you use a full strength varnish it's not gonna travelas far through the pores and through the grain. think of it like the analogy that i use is the bunch of straws the thicker - if you're pouring syrupthrough a bunch of straws it's probably not gonnamake it all the way through, but it you thin that syrupdown quite a bit it will so the idea is to get it, you know,
basically impregnate the wood, for lack of a better term, with varnish. so you do a couple of coats like that and you really will windup completely sealing it from the inside out whereas if you use the full strength material it will soak in a little bit, but for the most part it's jut gonna startbuilding a film right away and on a cutting boardwe don't want a film
we want it just to be impervious to water so that's my personal theory behind it. the best finish for alder? well alder is although ahardwood is relatively soft so, you know, you'reprobably gonna want to hit it with a little bit ofshellac as a sealer coat because it does have a tendency to blotch and then whatever top coat you want. whether it's lacquer, shellac, you know,
one of these oil varnishblends or straight varnish, whatever you want it works fine. yes, polyurethane, jayda, can be thinned with mineral spirits. you'll find that any ofthese oil-based finishes whether it's a pureoil, boiled linseed oil, an oil varnish blend or straight varnish or just, you know, minwaxpoly all of that stuff can safely be dilutedwith either paint thinner,
mineral spirits, naphtha, turpentine. i mean it's all sort of compatible. it just depends on whatyou have in the shop and me personally i just like to use mineral spirits or naphtha because i find them the least offensive to use. paint thinner just stinksup the whole place, but yes they're all safe to thin that way. epifanes go over stain?
yeah, epifanes goes great over stain. epifanes is nothing more than varnish. a very, very good highquality flexible varnish. so thin it 50% and itshould go fine over a stain. a waterproof finish that leaves the wood looking natural? the best you can do lex is compromise because to truly become waterproof - well i don't even knowthat that's possible.
let's just say to become water resistant you naturally need toget closer and closer to creating a film. you have to stop water from penetrating the wood fibres and theonly way to do that is to block them frompenetrating the wood fibres and just because of the way things look when you do that you create a film that just becomes lessand less natural looking
so it's always a balance. you can't have your cake and eat it too. so its either got to becompletely water resistant, completely protected or its got to be on the other side where,you know, it looks nicer. so that's why these blends are really nice because they serve as a good compromise. i personally i like totake just arm-r-seal. i don't really mess withthe blends too much.
i think a nice coat of arm-r-seal is absolutely gorgeous. so i will use just awiping varnish maybe if i'm looking for a nicerelatively natural finish i'll rub in maybe 3 coats of this stuff and then wipe off the excess and it's pure varnish so you're gonna get a decent amount of protection, but it's a really thin varnish
and you won't get asuper, super thick build, but again it's a compromise. i have used lye on cherry johnny uma asks. you know, you can dothat here's the problem. it's an extremely, you know, basic, it's caustic, it's not really something - if you can avoid it i would say avoid it. i mean it works. you put a basic solutionlike pure what is it
red devil that you canget in a hardware store or drano you put a solution of that stuff onto the wood especiallyit's primarily cherry it's gonna really, reallydarken it in a hurry. but you know what else does that? the sun. uv exposure will darkencherry not quite as quickly, but it does get the job done so i would much rather, you know, put the stuff outside,let it catch some rays
for a couple days and then hit it with a pure chemical, you know, especially one that's really caustic. just personally if i don'thave to deal with that stuff i'd rather not. really the two finishes that i think are going to be the leastoffensive to your senses as they cure are going to be water-based. pretty much anything that's waterborne
for the most part is going to be fine and then lacquers. initially the lacquer is very offensive, but i find after a couple days there's hardly any detectable odor at all. shellac is also going tobe really good for that. basically if you're lookingto avoid curing smells stay away from what we'vebeen talking about today. boiled linseed oil, thesemixes and the varnishes
will all retain odor for asignificant amount of time and that's why we never really use them on the inside of drawersor the inside of cases because they will stink and they will make your clothing stink or anything you put inside that container stink. wipe-on poly and wipe-onvarnish any difference? well this is like we said earlier. poly is a type of varnish so when
i say wipe-on varnish icould be talking about polyurethane that's just been diluted or it could be some other type of varnish that's been diluted, butessentially for the most part as far as average terminology is concerned typically you use those interchangeably. i'll say, you know,wipe-on poly, you know, when i'm really talking about something that actually has somethingother than poly in it,
but essentially for the most part they're the same thing. well there's a lot of different ways you could rub out a finish from the sort of old fashioned abrasive method using finer and finerabrasives to, you know, for instance one of the things that like the festool system the rotex system prides itself on isthe ability to buff out
a surface just usingtheir micro sanding pads. you know, it's good stuffit's just expensive. you know, i don't do it that often. the only time i ever have done that is when i used to work at a refinishing shop occasionally we would get a table or a big conference tablewhere they just want that super insane glass smooth finish and like as high gloss asyou could possibly imagine
like piano finish gloss and in those cases when you got a lot of space to cover we needed machines so we basically used power buffers. we start the processwith a half-sheet sander with 2,000 grit sandpaper. this is after the final coat. we're using lacquer bythe way. it's important. not every finish is good for rubbing out.
these urethanes andvarnishes and oil mixtures not the greatest thing. they're really, really durable because they can take a hit sothey're sort of soft. things like shellac and lacquer on the other hand are really - well they're relatively brittle, but if they'er brittle that means that they can be buffed toa really nice shine so
those are ideal for something like this. so this table would becompletely lacquered, final coat would be addedand then we go through with a quarter-sheet sander. we spray the entiresurface down with water to just kind of lubricate it and we're essentially buffing the surface and scratching the surface evenly all the way across with 2,000 grit.
what that does is level it. if you have any orange peel on the surface you cannot buff it out to a, you know, absolute perfect shine. you've got to completely level it and have it glass smooth. it may not be super clear at this point, but it will be dead flat and smooth. at that point you startwith your abrasives
so that's really what itcomes down to what you want. now what we used to do is use like meguiar's automotive abrasives is typically a 2 or 3part system of abrasive, you know, gel type material you squeeze it out on the surface you've got your buffing pad and you're just being careful not to burn through the lacquer.
you just do the best you can and move up until finally your last step is like the swirl remover and that was the process that we used. in the shop there's a lot more manual ways you could do it. i've got a couple of little containers. i made little home-made shakers of, you know, rottenstone and things like that
where you could put those on the surface and just progress through. finer and finer abrasive powders. there's quite a fewdifferent ways you can do it. is there any difference in using pore fillers with the different finishes? well pore fillers comein different varities just like finishes do. you've got your oil-based pore fillers.
you can make your own pore filler by taking some of this oil varnish blend and sanding it into the surfacethat will fill the pores and you can use water-based, for instance, it's all the way over there timbermate wood filleris not only great for, you know, filling little cracks and voids and things like that likea standard, you know, wood putty would be, butyou can dilute it in water
and make an incrediblygood wood filler out of it or pore filler out of it and you can color match it and make it whatever color you want, spread it over the surface, sand it down, but it is water-based and itwill reactivate with water so you have to be careful what you then add on top of that soif i was using something that was water-based iwould probably coat it
with some shellac to seal that stuff in and then hit it with whatevertop coat i wanted to. if you're using an oil-based top coat you could probably avoid the shellac layer if you wanted to becausethe oil is not going to pick up the water-based filler. shellac is made of shellac. it's a lac bug excretion that's collected. and this is more or lessa purified version of it.
you know what - it comes in these little flakes. they're very, very brittle and it dissolves in alcohol and that's it. it's about the simplestmost natural purest finish you can use. it's typically on atime-released medication if part of the pill iscoated with, you know, a shellac barrier the shellacdoesn't really dissolve
in the acid of yourstomach so when it first hits your stomach part ofthe pill can dissolve then. the other part doesn't dissolve until your "parts" your plumbingbecomes more basic and then that dissolvesthe second part of the pill and that's for the most part how the time-released stuff works. that's tricky and you know what? there's a good thing that i don't know.
every situation is a little bit different. that would be the major, major drawback to a varnish finish. we talked about it being more protective. well it's got to be becauseif it doesn't protect the finish or the woodand you get something, you know, that really penetrates it it's a very difficult thing to repair. the way you think of varnish
and when you're comparingit to like shellac, lacquer, even just oneof these oil finishes varnish is the hardest to repair and the reason is thinkof varnish more like layers of plastic wrap, okay, you put one layer down let it dry, the next layer comes down, you let it dry. those layers do not really intermingle. i mean they lock downtogether, they adhere,
but they don't become one. when you spray shellacor lacquer every coat that you spray meltsinto the coat before it so when it's all said and done is one thick layer of lacquer orone thick layer of shellac. it's called burn-in. you don't have that withvarnish unfortunately so if you, let's say you get a scratch and you want to just repair that scratch
if you start sanding and you burn from the top most layer into the next layer what that does is creates what they call like witness lines wherever you burn-in you'll see that ridge of the varnish where you burn-in fromone layer to another. so it becomes very, very tricky. the best you can really hope for is that if you have surface scratches is that
you can sand that top, you know, layer abrade that top layer just enough that it gets those scratchesout and now your top layer is super, super thinand then you can kind of just recoat it with afresh coat of varnish, but if you've got a deepwound in a varnish surface i don't think there - at least that i know of there's really not a great fix for that.
now if you have one of these oil finishes if you have shellac,lacquer you could sand that one particular spot,get it nice and smooth, get the scratch out or whatever it is, or if it's water damage get that water damage out and then just recoat it and the material just blends right into the old stuff. see here's the thing with finishes guys.
you can use anything you want. if you're doing, youknow, there are certain woods that respond betterto certain colors let's say, but really when it comes to a top coat it's kind of, you know, half function and half preference. if it's something that'sgonna be used a lot well then you need to protect it enough like a dining room tableor something, you know,
it's pretty important that you get a nice durable finish on there, but you can still put a lacquer on there if you want to if youlike the way lacquer looks and you don't like polyurethane, but if you want more protection, let's say, you know, you got a family of 5 and you got kids beating up on that thing every morning you're probably gonna want
a polyurethane or some kindof varnish on that table and you'll be willing tosacrifice looks a little bit for the sake of protection. so something like curly cherry i would probably dosomething to pop the grain a little bit maybe hit itwith a little bit of dye and then sand it backto get all the dye off the top surface where it just soaks in. "pop goes the maple"
is a video that i did awhile back. look that up, and that kind of describes that process and then i would probably if it's like a surface that's gonna get used a lot i probably would default to arm-r-seal. if you have the ability to spray you could certainly look into some of the other options like lacquers and like a pre-catalyzed lacquer is gonna be
a pretty strong durable surface that's gonna look gorgeous. it's almost like, youknow, for me when someone asks what finish should i apply it's kind of like askingwhat car should i drive. you know, all finishesare going to do something. they'll get you from point a to point b, but there's a lot of questions that i can't answer between those points
that deal with your personal preferences and also what you havethe ability to apply. i did a video on that called "desert outdoor finish" just look that up on the site and the recommended finishthat i used for that. i wanted something that was repairable to some extent and i knew it would require a little bit of, you know, refreshing
every couple of years just by nature. our heat here is just insane in arizona so what i did was i tooka really high quality outdoor varnish this is epifanes. i diluted it a littlebit with mineral spirits so it's a little bitmore of a wipe-on formula and also added someboiled linseed oil to it. essentially creating an outdoor version of one of these the danish oil
or this tung oil finish from minwax. it's an oil varnish blendand putting that on the door was great. it worked really, really well. so every couple of years i just go back, sand it lightly andthen i add a fresh coat of this mixture and it works really well. what i find though is after a while those pores really - they get sealed up and the more sealed
those pores are the less likely it is to cure when you've got the oil in there because this oil reallyrequires a porous surface for it to cure properly so i tend to go a lotstronger on the varnish and just give it a nice light coat of the wiping varnish and this is now like 4 years into it, 3 years. do i put the same numberof coats on all surfaces?
that's a good question. no. i make sure that all surfaces are sealed. there's a point when thesurface is truly sealed. it's not going to absorb anymore finish or any liquid for that matter especially when we'retalking about varnishes. at that point on certain surfaces, maybe the inside of acabinet, the bottom of a table i'm not too concerned aboutthe final maybe 2 coats
or something like that as long as the first 2 or 3 coats go on it's nice and sealed up i'm really happy. the top gets the full treatment. so yeah i mean it's not a bad idea, but i don't think it'scompletely necessary to go through the entire finish regimen from coat 1 to coat 5 onthe underside of a surface.