Finishing

With shellac and lacquer finishes, which are the finishes used on almost all old furniture and woodwork, you can use their solvent for stripping instead of a paint-and-varnish remover. Depending [...]

You may be aware that I’m not a big advocate of random orbit sanders. I prefer to sand by hand most of the time. I think it’s faster, and it’s for sure safer, especially on veneer. If you’re [...]

My brother is remodeling his house, which is great for my blog because he’s a magnet for finish problems. Then he calls me. Here’s the latest: He hired a paint contractor to recoat his deck, [...]

Glazing is easy to do, and it can add a lot of decoration to furniture or woodwork. In the case of the corner chest pictured, glaze is used to highlight the detail of the moldings and carvings. [...]

When you roll latex paint onto walls and ceilings, some of the paint comes off the roller as spatter and lands on, and sticks to, furniture and other objects. All of us “old timers” know that if [...]

Sometimes you want to make wood lighter than it is in its raw state. This is common when trying to match the wood to something that already exists. The way to do it is to first bleach out the [...]

Every now and then someone comes into my shop, and in the course of conversation volunteers to me that his (it’s always a him) family had a secret formula for a finish that had been passed down [...]

If you are a serious woodworker (even if you aren’t that good yet), and you’re looking for an unbelievable woodworking experience, let me suggest that you consider attending the International [...]

This has nothing to do with wood finishing, but I find it interesting anyway. You’re probably aware that Google is working on self-driving cars. Well, the company has filed a patent for an [...]

To maximize the beauty of curly maple (also bird’s-eye maple), you want the curls to “pop” – that is, be significantly darker than the rest of the wood. To do this you need to get more color into [...]

Here’s a caution when stripping paint or finish from furniture or woodwork. Most of the newer “safer” strippers are sold in plastic containers and contain the solvent n-methyl pyrrolidone (NMP) [...]

It’s that time of year and you may be thinking about how to take care of your wood deck. Here’s the easy way to approach it, at least for decks made of rot-resistant woods such as redwood, cedar, [...]