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One of the most useful products in wood finishing that doesn’t get a lot of attention is oxalic acid, often labeled wood bleach. It’s useful for removing black water stains without changing the [...]

My wife loves watching house restoration shows on TV. The other day she mentioned to me that the paint on every surface the host had stripped in this one house had come off so easily and cleanly. [...]

A finishing topic that gets far too little coverage is aerosol finishing. Aerosols are widely available in four common finishes: lacquer, oil-based polyurethane, water-based finish and shellac. [...]

Here’s a situation you may have experienced if you do much French polishing. A woodworker friend emailed me with this problem. He had been French polishing a tabletop, and no matter what he did, [...]

A woodworker friend emailed me with a problem. He had turned a face-grained bowl from what he described as “grainy” walnut. To finish it he was using Watco Danish Oil, and his problem was that [...]

You may have noticed that acetone is becoming more widely available. This is primarily because it’s the only commonly available solvent that is classified as an exempt VOC solvent. VOC is the [...]

Boiled linseed oil and 100% tung oil are the two widely available drying oils. Though called “drying oils” both dry adequately only when applied very thin. If the excess isn’t wiped off after [...]

When it comes to finishing products, what happens in California doesn’t stay in California. It usually spreads across the country. So when a California friend emailed to tell me that denatured [...]

I know that a lot of readers use shellac for finishing. Of all finishes, shellac is probably the easiest to use when it comes to cleaning and storing brushes because shellac dissolves easily in [...]

A few weeks ago my sister-in-law in Denmark got very severe burns on her lower legs from a gasoline explosion. Her friend had piled up a lot of brush and wanted to burn it. So he pored on some [...]

If you’ve done much woodworking, it’s very likely that you have experienced some dents and gouges. Both are flaws in the wood. But they are not the same thing, so they should be treated [...]

A woodworker friend called me with a problem. He had just built a bookcase and was trying to match the approximate sheen of a factory-finished piece of furniture he had and couldn’t find a [...]