Finishing

I got a call recently from a friend who runs a mid-size woodworking shop. He was making several dozen walnut tables for a restaurant and finishing them with pre-catalyzed lacquer....

As I mentioned in a previous post, I had good woodworking skills 40 years ago when I started doing furniture restoration, including furniture repair. But repairing furniture is different than...

In my first blog post I told you about a new smart-coating technology that causes liquids, including pee, to bounce off surfaces. In the case of pee, it bounces back...

It has been my intention from the beginning of this blog to include postings about furniture restoration. By restoration I mean wood repair (including regluing), finish repair and refinishing. For...

This may have happened to you. It’s surely happened to me. When you’re brushing a finish, the brush picks up some of the stain and lightens the wood. It’s even...

So I’m sitting at dinner trying to get the last of the ketchup out of the bottle pictured here when I noticed that almost none of the ketchup was left...

OK, it’s a small thing, but I still get irritated when I see or hear shellac described as bug excretion. It’s not (think of the related word “excrement.”) It’s a...

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...

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...

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...

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...