Archives

Take a walk on the wild side of finishing. I’ve got six good reasons to skip the stain and polyurethane on your next small project: bleached, blended, charred, marbled, salt and pepper, and iron [...]

Waterlox is a mainstay for furniture makers. Follow these steps to get a deep glow, a buttery-smooth surface and unmatched protection.

My finishing turntable is perfect for spraying large parts or projects. To make the device, I mounted five fixed 3-1/2” casters on a plywood panel. They’re equally spaced in a 16” diameter [...]

A simple test reveals ideal pressure for atomization. Spray guns can run off a compressor or a turbine. With turbines the air pressure is established by the number of “stages,” usually two, three [...]

Finding a felt-tip marker or touch-up stick that actually matches the color of your project is a real crapshoot. What if you could make your own, using your own stain? You can, using the Perfect [...]

Once an inaccuracy gets started, it becomes almost impossible to correct. “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on,” said Winston Churchill (or [...]

Adding wear and tear to a piece is like writing a convincing tale of fiction. It’s your day off. So, you go into your shop to make a new piece of furniture. How do you want it to look …

While Flax Oil, Shellac, and Tung oil are all good transparent finishes for students, what if you want to cover up the appearance of the natural wood instead? Let’s remember the key [...]

After showcasing the two most popular finishes I work with as an educator—Flaxseed oil and Shellac—I’m excited to delve into another favored option: Tung oil. Tung oil and Walnut oil stand [...]

As I mentioned in the last article, I’ve experimented with a wide variety of finishes over the years as an educator and woodworker. This has helped me figure out what kinds of finish are [...]

As a woodworking teacher and a maker, I’ve tried almost every finish out there, perhaps short of Urushi. I’ve experimented with everything from oil and wax finishes to lacquer, [...]

How can something so simple be made so hard to understand? It’s probably fair to say that a majority, or at least a large minority, of woodworkers use a finish they can wipe on and off the wood. [...]