A reader wanted to know if he should apply a lacquer sanding sealer on some wood that had had a …
The post Is it necessary to apply a lacquer sanding sealer over a coat of shellac to seal the wood? appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.
The usual way of applying stain is to apply a wet coat and wipe off the excess before it dries. …
The post Here’s an Alternative Way of Applying Stain: Spray and Leave Unwiped appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.
I was having a phone conversation earlier this week with an amateur woodworker who told me that he hates finishing …
The post You Can’t Ruin Your Woodworking Project With a Finish appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.
I got a call from a long-time client asking me to come by and see if I could fix the …
The post Heat Marks on Catalyzed Varnish Finishes: These Can Be Impossible to Remove appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.
One of the most frustrating flaws in a dried finish is bubbles. The trick is to avoid getting them in …
The post Bubbles in a Finish: How to Avoid Them or Deal With Them appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.
Recently, I had an exchange with a friend who does woodworking as a hobby, and the exchange made me realize …
The post Thinning Oil and Varnish: It Can Seem Confusing appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.
It would be hard to find a question in woodworking more often asked and more often inadequately answered than how …
The post How to Make Cherry Look Old: There’s No Good Way appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.
Maybe it’s because of the decades I spent restoring old and antique furniture, so I realize how difficult it can …
The post Tricking Furniture Appraisers: I Love These Stories appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.
I got this question from a friend and thought I should share my answer on the blog because it addresses …
The post How to Finish a Table Made of Hickory appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.
In 1946 a fellow named William M. Barr invented a new paint stripper based on the solvent, methylene chloride. It …
The post Methylene Chloride – Part 2: Some Retailers Take Certain Paint Strippers Off Their Shelves appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.
On this panel, I stained it all red with a Lockwood dye. Then I wiped over the left section with …
The post Matching Colors: The Easiest and Most Foolproof Way I Know appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.
This is pretty basic, but here goes anyway. When you have a situation of peeling paint, you have to remove it before applying fresh paint, or your efforts will be ineffective. Scraping usually works best, but in these situations, it’s pretty clear that the wood has deteriorated due to the exposure to sun and rain, so paint isn’t going to hold well unless you sand first. A few passes with […]
The post Painting Over Peeling Paint: You Must Remove it First appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.
Over my career making and restoring furniture I’ve found washcoats helpful now and then when staining wood. A washcoat is a finish, any finish, thinned with two or more parts thinner and applied to wood under a stain to partially seal the wood so penetration of the stain is limited. The purpose is to reduce blotching in blotch-prone woods such as pine, cherry and birch. That is, in softwoods and […]
The post How Wood Conditioners are Giving Washcoats a Bad Name appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.
You may be aware that I have a connection with Denmark. My wife is Danish, and we lived there for two years in the mid-1970s. So I guess that makes me the go-to expert on all furniture Danish. One question that comes up often is how to care for Danish teak furniture. Typically, the questioner had bought a bottle of “teak oil” from the Danish store that sold them the […]
The post Danish Teak Furniture: How to Care for It appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.
Those who follow this blog know that I’m pretty taken with the advances being made in paints and coatings. We might not be seeing these advances in the paint we buy at the home center yet, but it’s fun to anticipate what’s coming. So the latest I’ve seen is a paint that disables the nervous system in mosquitoes, which prevents them from flying or biting. The paint has been developed […]
The post Mosquito Paralyzing Paint: It Would be Great If It Works appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.
I get a lot of questions about finish problems, and, as you can imagine, they are often difficult to diagnose simply from the description. In these situations, a picture can really be worth a thousand words. Take the example shown here. How would you describe it? The situation really happened, but the picture is mine. It’s a picture of a flaw called pinholes. These are tiny bubbles in the finish […]
The post Pinholes: A Fairly Uncommon Problem That Can be Difficult to Fix appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.
After my last post (April 10) about wearing gloves when spraying with a spray gun, I thought it might be appropriate to discuss aerosols as a substitute for spray guns. There are two types of aerosols, each identifiable by its nozzle. The nozzle on most aerosols has a cylindrical-shaped actuator you push down to spray a cone-shaped pattern. The nozzle on some aerosols has a small button at the top […]
The post Aerosols: They Can Substitute for a Spray Gun appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.
I’ll probably get pushback on this, but here goes anyway. I’d love to hear your objections. Look at the above picture. What seems odd to you? It’s not something small. It’s jumping right off the screen. The spraying technique is entirely correct, especially with the opposite hand holding the hose out of the way. Not doing this is the most common mistake I see when teaching a class. The student […]
The post This Mystifies Me Every Time I See It – Wearing Gloves While Finishing appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.
A friend called with a finish question. He had just made a guitar in a guitar-making class and wanted to know the best finish for it. He began with the statement that he didn’t have a spray gun and didn’t want to use aerosol lacquer because he didn’t want to stink up his house. So right away he eliminated about half the finish possibilities because they dry very rapidly so […]
The post Tru-Oil for Finishing a Guitar: It Should Work Well appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.
I got a question from a professional woodworker wanting to know if he could market the shellac he used as “all natural,” or if Zinsser put non-natural ingredients in their shellac that didn’t evaporate. Great question, because it brings up the issue of the safety of “natural” substances. This term is used a lot to indicate that the substance is safe for humans. But there are all sorts of poisons […]
The post All Natural: Can Shellac Be Marketed As All Natural? appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.