The art of a good finish

If you decide to make a table, fit some skirting or put in a new windows board please take my advise and make sure the finish is right. 

Over the last 10 years I have learnt a lot about wood. How the different types, how it machines and how it finishes. The finishing has been the part I dislike. It always feels like an aggravation and takes for ever. That extra pass with the sander is always too much because you have been doing it for an hour already and surely it won’t matter it the saw mark doesn’t clean up. It feels smooth, but take it from me once the wood is oiled, an imperfection in the timber such as a saw mark will show up and it will annoy you for ever more!! Every time you look at it you will wonder why you gave up and for an extra 10 minutes the final result will be worth it.  The annoyance from the 100th pass of the sander will be forgotten in time and from experience, my wife saying what happened here? and if you had spent more time on it for the 10th time in a month is far worse than the initial pain. One pain goes away the other you are stuck with for life!!!!!!!

When I started I thought that a planed finish was fine. You could oil onto the board, leave sawn edges and it would be fine. I have since learnt that even an 80-grit finish through an industrial sander isn’t suffice for that perfect finish. As soon as you oil something it shows the imperfections in the finish.  As my pictures show I made that mistake. The 80-grit finish on the right shows how the grain lifts and no matter how many coats of oil or wax you put on it, you can’t hide that I didn’t want to spend that extra 10 minutes with a fine paper!!

Now I am older, well two years order anyway, I have learnt from this and when I produced the coffee shop tables in Yandles café I spent hours making sure the finish was right. I did the same as before in that I planed and then sanded to 80-grit with the company sander, but this time after that I spent a day getting the finish right. I used the Mirka orbital sander, first with a 100-grit disc and then 320 grit disc going over the whole table top to ensure the finish was perfect. Firstly, I have to say the Mirka sander was a dream to use and didn’t cause me any discomfort all day and was a dramatic improvement on the old orbital sander we did have in the mill. Secondly by spending that extra time the finish was better, and the oiling and waxing was also a lot easier.

The final finish is another thing I have learnt. One coat isn’t enough. I have found that by putting the hard work in to start with the maintenance in the long term is a lot easier and let’s face it, who wants to be continually re oiling something?! Previously I have stuck to just oil and only two coats at that. This though needed constant re attention. My finish of choice now is three coats of Tung/Danish oil(the first diluted 50-50 with white spirit and all excess oil wiped off after the coat has been applied) followed by a coat of renaissance wax. I have found that by putting on the final coat of wax at the end, the protection it gives lasts a lot longer and means that the advised once a year wax, can be stretched to 2 years without a top up coat.

The table in the coffee shop took an extra day, but the final result is well worth the extra time. If I ever return to doing any more woodwork in the house I will do the same and my wife will not let me forget it!

Alex

From the mill