Blackened Wood: Designing with Fire
Black and grays are the stars of today’s architecture and furniture design. Most of the black in today’s wood furniture and cabinetry is painted or produced by means of stains and [...]
Witness Lines: A New Name for an Old Problem
A woodworker asked me recently, “What the heck is a witness line?” Well, this opens up an interesting discussion. One of my pet peeves since I began teaching finishing, has been people creating [...]
Disposing of Solvent Waste: How to do it Safely and Legally
Dirty solvent waste can be a problem to get rid of. Even if you use water-based finishes, you’ll probably still accumulate some dirty solvents over time, from cleaning if nothing else. The best [...]
How I got Rid of Leaf and Pine Needle Stains on a Deck
You may recall that I have a brother who comes up with some very unusual finish problems. This one’s a beauty. As with many people, my brother has a deck attached to his house. The house is [...]
How to Remove Scratches from a Car – Polish with an Electric Polisher, a Lamb’s-wool Pad and Water-based Rubbing Compound
I have a friend who did a stupid thing. Before explaining what happened, I want to remove any reference to a real name or a sex. So I’m going to call my friend “Pat” in memory of that wonderful [...]
Avoid Damaging Finish with an Electric Polisher and Lamb’s Wool Pad
I got a call from a piano refinisher who had damaged the new finish he had applied by getting it too hot with an electric polisher. It turned out that he had polished finishes for years without [...]
Polyurethane is Almost Always the Best Finish for Wood Floors
We are offering a spectacular collection of products by Bob Flexner at shopwoodworking.com right now. Check it out here, Finishing with Bob Flexner Collection. The two key considerations for [...]
Spontaneous Combustion & Oil Finishes: Drape Rags Over the Edge of a Trash Can to Avoid a Fire
Drying oils, especially linseed oil (raw or boiled), are the only finishing materials that spontaneously combust. Solvents don’t spontaneously combust, paint strippers (including paint or finish [...]
Titanium Dioxide a Carcinogen? Europe Thinks It Is
It’s not just solvents such as methylene chloride that are coming under scrutiny as suspected human carcinogens. (I wrote about methylene chloride in the June, 2017 issue of Popular Woodworking.) [...]
What to Do When White Oak Won’t Take Stain Evenly
I received a question from a woodworker who had made an end table from quartersawn white oak and had a problem with the stain penetrating unevenly. The problem showed up just on the end grain, [...]
Gluing Dowel Joints: Why Factory Furniture Dowel Joints Loose so Quickly
Why does so much factory furniture, made with dowel joinery in the last forty or fifty years, often not hold up well? I have two explanations, both of which are shown in these pictures of chair [...]
Suspicions Confirmed: Zero VOC Claims Exaggerated
Ever since water-based paints and finishes began carving out a market for replacing solvent-based products, claims for the amount of solvent these products contain have been getting increasingly [...]
