(lively music) marc: okay, so i guess it's probably where we should startthen is picking out a wood that is not going to blotch. the best thing that i could recommend because just about any boardhas potential to blotch, depending on the way the grain grows. if there's figure, technically figure is the same thing as blotching
expect for it's blotchingin a very attractive pattern over and over and that's what we see is like curly maple for instance. when the grain is actuallyundulating through the board so whenever the grain is facing up you've got a area that's goingto soak finish in differently and give it a different colorthan the rest of the piece. now there are certainspecies that tend to blotch a lot more than others
and the best way to avoid the blotchiness is to avoid the woods that blotch. unfortunately though,they're very common woods so things like birch, maple, cherry. i've got some alder here, a lot of these domesticsthat we use here in the us are the ones that tend to blotch the most and that could be problematic so it's really best to prepare for,
and anytime you've gotone of those species in your shop, just assumethat it's going to blotch. then that way you're absolutely covered and usually the finish justcomes out more consistent and clean anyway. the first thing i want to do is show you the most common thing that most of us aregoing to do on our shops and that's grab some good old minwax.
this is walnut, i wanted togo with a really dark one so that you could see what happens here. just the standard oil-based stain which by the way i veryrarely use in my work for this exact reason. okay, so i'm just goingto apply it to the alder and again this is alderthat's had absolutely nothing done to it yet. just freshly sanded to a 180 grit.
okay, i'm trying to be neat, just trying to get it done and you guys happen to see my typo on the announcement forthis live daily whacker? which i didn't realize,i saw people saying like repeating what i said but i thought they were just joking until someone said, "were you serious" "when you typed that?"
yeah, so for those who haven'tseen it, i accidentally ... i subconsciously, i don'tknow what was going on in my mind but i talked about fighting. i was trying to say fighting blotchiness and instead i typed bitchiness and just about spent thewhole day saying bitchiness which was pretty hilariousbut i did change it. okay so i'm just wipingof the excess here. not terrible but hopefullyyou could see some of the,
it's typically around the areas where the grain changesup pretty significantly or maybe around an area that's like a knot or something like that. let's see if, make surei can get that on camera, get a nice view. can everybody see that? see, blotchy, that's blotchy all right. again alder, cherry, birch, maple
are all going to havea tendency to do this. okay so, on the other sidelet's divide this piece up into three sections and i'll show you what i liketo do to fight bitchiness, i mean blotchiness. all right, moving right along. now there are all kindsof things on the market that you can use for this, pre-stain conditioners
are certainly something that you can use, those things are fine butthey serve one purpose and one purpose only,is to be a pre-stain. i prefer you use something that's much more applicableto other things in the shop so for me shellac is perfect because it's not only agood top coat by itself but it's perfect for sealing any project, any type of wood.
if you for the rest of yourlife every project you ever did you pre-sealed with like a half pound or a one pound cut of shellac, your work would be moreconsistent over time and nothing would ever really, i mean it's like a universal binder so you can put shellac oneverything as a base coat, as a sealer coat and itwill improve the result. kind of a blanket statement there,
maybe exceptions but you get the point. it's better to have abig gallon of shellac than have to get a can ofa pre-stain conditioner every time you want to dosomething on a blotchy wood. i usually get the bullseyesealcoat in a gallon and i actually did a little math on this during a really big project,a commercial project that a buddy of mineand i were going to do when i priced out dry flakes
versus the price i could get the lowest price i canget this stuff per gallon, it was actually cheaper to buy this stuff pre-mixed by the gallon thanit was to buy the flakes and go through all thetrouble of mixing our own. that's what i recommenddoing, bullseye sealcoat. this is what it looks likeif you are not familiar, it's good stuff. now it comes in a twopound cut and i am not ...
i'm looking at my eyeprotection around here so do as i say, not as i do kind of thing. i'm not real picky about myshellac cuts, oops paper. i know that this is about a two pound cut and i am going to dilute it roughly 50% and although i know that'snot exactly one pound cut, it's close enough forthe spagnuolo family. okay so all i'm going to do now is cut it using the same little measuring device
that i stole from the kitchen. just dilute it down a little bit, you see two pound ... and i have an example i'll show you later, two pound is a little bit too much. i mean the thicker this mixture is and the more concentrated the shellac is the more it's going toseal off the surface so maybe i'll talk aboutthe theory behind this.
the idea is the surface is going to absorb in different areas, it's going to absorbthe finish differently or the stain differently and that's what we're talking about before with the grain moving. the idea is the end grain isalways going to stay in darker than face grain so if you have wacky stuff,softer parts of the wood,
all those things lead to the blotchiness and the blotchiness isnothing more than a area that's absorb the stain more. if we could pre-seal thesurface with something, at least partially blockssome of that absorption, you're going to wind upwith a much more smooth and consistent surfacebut you can go too far. you can put too much shellac on there and completely block off itsability to absorb any stain
which is not good either especially if you plan onreusing your oil-based stain. we just make sure thisis nice and mixed here. yeah, this is just denaturedalcohol from home depot or lowes by the gallon. all right so what we're going to do here with these three different panels, i am going to ... and maybe i only neededtwo because that's the oil.
basically the whole thingis going to be sealed with this approximateone pound cut of shellac. actually you know whatlet's do one full strength, one with the one pound and then the other with the one pound, i'll explain that in a second. that's going to make it sound so much more confusingthan it needs to be. the two right ones are goingto be with the one pound.
okay make sure it soaks in, this stuff dries so fast but i'll go over it a second time before it's completely dry. if the wood's really, really thirsty i do add a little bit more as i go, just kind of by eye. okay so these two panels now have the one pound cut each,
i'm going to write it here just in case. i'm going to open up the can again. okay and i want to get some of the full strength material now and do a two pound on this top area here. now on my other test boardwhich i'll show you later, i was able to actually see the difference between the one and the two pound cut. you may not just dependingon this particular board,
it may not look any different but i might, we'll see. normally you want to let thisdry for a good hour or a two, great thing is shellac dries super fast. in this case we don't reallyhave the luxury of time here so i'm probably going to let it dry for just a couple minutes, i'll talk to you guys before we worry aboutapplying any stain to this
and give it some time to cure a little bit and then we'll jumpback into the staining. okay, i think we can probably jump into the next part here. now, remember i have twopound cut, one pound cut, one pound cut and i'm going to show you two different stains. on the first two panelsthe two and the one, i'm going to show you theminwax oil-based stain
that we used before. what we should see is the two pound cut will be sealed better than the one pound. hopefully this is going to be okay, not letting it completely cure this the best thing for a demobut what are you going to do? now the other thing to notice is the color should be also lighter see because we are sealingthe surface, partially
but we're still sealing it so it's not going to pullin quite as much color as it might otherwise pull in. now, you can see a pretty good improvement over what we had before. okay relatively consistentall the way across and there's a few littledark spots here and there, little tiny spot there. this one being the one pound cut
should show a little bitmore blotching than this one, either way, whatevervariability there is there maybe the application method i use they're both sealed pretty good and the result is pretty good, certainly better than what we had here. also notice the dramatic color or the dramatic reduction inthe intensity of the color. okay, this is the dark, real deep walnut,
i mean this is labeled dark walnut. this is what its supposed to look like. this is not what its supposed to look like so therein lies the problembecause we wanted this color. okay, well now we don'thave blotching, yey! but we also don't havethe color we were after so this is why i suggest notusing standard oil-based stuff, i suggest using a gel stain. now this is general finishes java,
i don't a dark walnut on hand, this is all i have. this stuff and not all gelstains are created equal, there are some crappy gel stains out there that i've used before andjust had no luck with at all. i have never had a problemwith general finishes stains and their stains, their dyes and of course their gel stains. now the concept with a gel stain
is that it doesn't absorb quite as deep, you could see the stuff isthick, it's like pudding. in fact this looks like pudding. it's going to sit on a surface more, it doesn't rely on real deep absorption to give you the color so you can actually put it on a surface, you could work it a little bit. if you have an area
that's got a little bit of a light streak, you could leave a little bitmore material on that spot and just work the surface until it looks exactly the way you want it to. you have that luxury with this stuff. i will show you ... okay, now normally with a gel stain, i actually thin it out justa little bit, not a lot, just enough so it's alittle bit easier to work
because i like to floodthe surface with the color and let it set for a few seconds. you could see i got a really, really good color transfer there. this stuff is actually theconsistency of loose paint or actually slightly moreviscous paint i should say but more than anything pudding. okay so i get a clean part of my rag and now we're going toswipe off the excess.
now we should really ... because it is a one pound cut, we shouldn't see a whole lot of difference in the blotchiness. now see gel stain, ifwe had used gel stain from the beginning on this side, we might have actually had less blotching, gel stain in and of itselfit doesn't absorb as deeply so you'll get that opportunityto color the surface
in a way that hides some of that blotch. the best combinationis a pre-sealed surface and a gel stain. now, that is about as evenand consistent and clean as you can ask a board to be. sorry, i got to make sure you guys can see everything, okay. is that pretty clear? compared to what we saw on this side.
now the point here is obviously if we can go this dark we can certainly, if we had the right material, i could certainly hit a dark walnut color but imagine if i was able to get that level ofconsistency on a board that normally is goingto look like this, okay. this is crap, this is a terrible result and if you spent weeksworking on a project
and you get to the pointthat you stained it and this is what you end up with, this is actually tricky to recover from because now that stuff isembedded in the surface and you've got some problems, okay. if you know ahead of time that the wood happens to be a blotch prone wood, you can prevent this from happening and get a result that looks more like this
instead of one that looks like this. now i'm curious just because obviously you want to letthat dry a little bit more but i'm curious if you put the gel stain over top of the oil stain, could you recover without having to strip or sand down the entire project which would be a blast, i'm sure. remember this side has no shellac at all
as a pre-sealer. we're just using the gel stain and that was the worst part right here so i'm just curious if we'reable to mute some of that discrepancy in color. i need more rag. a little bit huh, that's better. you can still see it a little bit there
but certainly nothing likewhat we would have gotten if we had a pre-sealer coatof the shellac on there. okay here's anotherboard, this is the one ... i've got a thing in atlanta that i'm going to do thesame demonstration at so i wanted to bring somepractice boards with me. this one came out a littlebit better this afternoon in displaying the difference. i did the same exactthing that we did here
but you can see ... i don't know how well thisis going to come across in the webcam but this is the two pound cut, this is the one and this isagain the one with the gel stain but if you look really close you could see a lot ofextra just black marks and things where the pores werestill a little bit more open in the one pound cut.
you could see how they were sealed off a little bit better on a two pound cut so the discrepancy here isa little bit more visible but again the results are still the same on the final piece just looks tremendous. that is what i do. i mean there are other things you can do. like we talked about thepre-stain wood conditioner and things like that, those will work too
but i think you're betteroff in terms of saving money and having materialsthat you're going to use for multiple things, not justthis particular procedure. shellac is really the way to go. i mean shellac is just a, it's a woodworker's best friend and more people shouldbe using it for sure. is this covered in the finishing dvd? no, the finishing dvd ispurely on applying varnish,
a very simple method for applying varnish for just about any project. you could use this method before with the stuff thatyou would learn on the dvd. once we apply the stainafter this second step here, when you go to the pointof applying your top coat, that's when you would want to employ the method shown in that video. storage and longevity of products,
well the seal coat shelflife i believe is a year and that's more than you're probably going to get out of stuffif you premix yourself. now i don't know what they do to it that makes it last a yearbut i have had cans ... this can i got discounted from lowes because it had been on the shelf too long and i haven't touched itfor six to eight months and it's still great,still working just fine
so shelf life on thatis really, really good. the shelf life for seal coat, regardless of what the can says, the shelf life for seal coat is when it starts getting chunky andyou got a big skin on it. you could probably keep thatstuff in the can sealed up, untouched for years and it might be okay if you open it up and you puta little bit on a test board and it cures really nice and hard
within eight hours orso, go ahead and use it. the problem is when you open these things especially the finishes that dry and cure via oxidation, they get exposed to air and then that's when thecuring process starts so if it's sealed, they'lllast a really long time. as soon as you open them you're probably not going to get much more than a year out of it
unless you only take a little bit out and put the cap back on or the lid. you can put your extrafinish in mason jars. the bottom line with any finish is to limit the amount oftime that it's exposed to air so when you are pouringsome of your polyurethane out of a can, you want to pour it outinto a secondary container, only work from your secondary container.
seal that thing back up and limit the amount of timethat it's exposed to air because that will lengthenthe amount of time that you have to use it, theshelf life of the product. a lot of people i'veheard of using marbles so that if you don'thave another container that's smaller and youtake some material out, you need to get rid of some of that air. couple things you can do.
those spray cans of thatheavy air basically its ... i forget exactly what the gas is but an inert gas thatyou could spray on top pushes the oxygen out and then puts a bed of thisgas on top of the finish, put the lid on and you're good to go. you can also use likeheavy stuff like marbles so you could put marblesinto your bottles and cans to raise the level of the liquid
and thereby eliminate any air in the can just because there's no place for it to go and you just put the cap on that way. i have sprayed polyurethane and i got to tell youbrad, i am not a fan. anytime i sprayed it i either get bubbles, it just is messy and the problem is when you spray anything that doesn't cure ordry or evaporate quickly
it is very difficult thing to work with, you can get a lot of runs and sags. really the only way that i would ... i have done it in the pastand the only way that i do it is on my final coat. let's say i'm doing areally big banquet table or a conference table of some sort and the final coat is critical, you need that to go onas smooth as possible.
a lot of times what i've done in the past is i make like a 75% naphtha mixture with just a little bit of poly in it. i'll spray that on the surface and that will flush off rather quickly and give me a nice even smooth surface without laying down a bigwide sheet of polyurethane which can lead to the bubblesand things falling in it, bugs and all kinds of stuff.
that's about the extent of my poly spray, i don't really like it. if i'm going to sprayit's going to be something that's going to dry fastso lacquers, shellac, water-based materialsare all fun to spray. i just don't find oil-based very fun. brands to avoid, you knowwhat i have in here now this is not meant to be and should not be takenas a blanket statement
against their products but i have some, where is it? well quite frankly i didnot enjoy my experience with olympic gel stain,that's what i have here, traditional mahogany. this stuff is like barn red paint except for it's not as thick as paint. here let me put this by the microphone. okay, it's like liquid, thisis like a regular stain.
gel stain should not be that loose. gel stain should be a gel, so this is poop in the can right here. i do not use shellac on every project. i use it on the ones that i think i might havea finishing problem on, not every project. you know sometimes ifi'm just in the mood, i've got good access to all the parts
and it's not a real finicky thing, i'm not inside a cabinet, i don't mind having the smell of alcohol in the shop for a while, i will do it, flat panels and stuff. it's really a great initial coat. the bottom line is sealing, when people talk about sealing, the first coat of any finish is a sealer.
you don't have to buy anythingspecial to seal the wood. you can just take yournormal wiping varnish or polyurethane diluted a little bit and put a very light coat on. let that cure and thensand the whole surface nice and smooth and then start laying onyour full strength top coats. that works just as well as asealer as anything else would so you don't really need to go crazy
with different materials but i just like shellacbecause it dries really fast, it dries very hard and within a couple hours i've got that initial coat on there and then when i start usingmy more expensive materials for top coats i don't have to use as much because the wood isn't going to suck it in
quite as much as it otherwise would have. the shellac is a way of quickly sealing and getting that first coat over with. now i can worry about building the finish because it's not reallygoing to absorb too deep, so it gets you going a little bit faster. if you're not coloring thewood then sky is the limit. i mean if you're not goingto put any color on there, you're not going to noticeblotching quite as much.
there are some woods though that heavily blotch prone when you put the oil on thesurface, the oil-based finish, you're going to really notice them but it may not look so bad. because i mean to me, it's weird, one man's blotch is another man's figure, really if you think about it. sometimes if you have a blotchy wood
that's maybe it's got a little bit more consistent blotching across the surface and you just put an oil finish on it, well that starts to looklike texture and depth and it makes it look likeit's got a 3d element to it so it might not be such a bad thing but some people don't like the look of it. it really just depends onyour taste whether or not you have to go this routeto prevent blotching.
again you really can never go wrong with doing this procedureas a precautionary thing.