Top Coat Overview
George VondriskaDescription
There are LOTS of options for top coating your projects, and the choices can be very confusing. This video breaks top coat finishes into various categories, and explains advantages and disadvantages of individual finishes. It’ll help make choosing finish for your next project a lot easier.
So you're ready to finish your project you walk into the home center you look at the shelf and the huge array of stuff that's available and your head starts spinning you walk out in frustration, forget it I'm gonna skip the finishing. I know how this goes it can be really frustrating. There's a gazillion products on the shelf but I'm here to help you out. In broad categories we can break all of those products down all the top coat products into four categories. Here's what you've got. On my side my left side here, oil, shellac, lacquer and varnish. The top coat products that you can get from a home center will drop into these categories for you. Now let's talk a second about why we would use one or another of these finishes. Starting with the oil finish, starting with that one because it's about the easiest finish that you can put on. You wipe it on you don't really have to worry about dust in your shop, settling on it cause you can always just wipe the dust off. That's the good news, bad news. It's not very protective typically only a certain sheen if you can get that, if you want it to be real glossy you're gonna have to put a paste wax over the top of the oil. The paste wax is gonna take long-term maintenance kind of like wax in your car. You're gonna have to do it frequently to keep it looking good Over the long haul the good news with oil is it's very easy to repair. So if you get a scratch in it really it can just dampen a rag with more oil wipe over the scratch unless you have a wax on there. The wax would have to come off first with the help of mineral spirits then you could reapply the oil, okay. Easy to apply, but not a real durable finish. Now let's take up, take a step up to shellac here shellac has been around forever shellac is also very, very user-friendly very easy to apply very low fumes. So that's one of the user-friendly things. You're probably gonna put this on either with a brush out of the can or with an aerosol can like this now be aware that there are waxed shellacs and dewaxed shellacs, a waxed shellac is gonna have a little bit more color to it. It's gonna give a little bit more of an Amber tone to your project. The dewaxed shellac is a little bit more transparent. The beauty of dewaxed shellac is it is the universal go-between coat when you're using other top coat products. So what does that mean? I could put on a coat of dewaxed shellac and put any of these other top coat products over the top of it. That's a very good thing to know about. Let's say you need to refinish a project and you don't know what the first coat of finish on there is. You could rough it up with sandpaper put on a coat of shellac. Any of the other stuff is gonna stick to that shellac. So that's a very, very handy thing to know. Now, shellac also does not have real good durability or wearability compared to the other things we're gonna talk about over here but it is better than the oil. It's also very, very repairable because each subsequent coat of shellac melts into the previous coat. So you got a shellacked project and you get a scratch in it, you can put new shellac over the top of it, refresh the finish everything's gonna be good. Good application for shellac would be small projects, toys things of that nature. Now let's step up to lacquer lacquer is the finish that is probably on every stick of furniture in your house. Everything that was commercially made very, very widely used in industry. Part of the reason is that it dries very, very quickly. So think about a dusty environment. If we have a finish that dries slowly, there's a lot of opportunity for junk to get into the finish that's not good. With shellac it flashes or dries very, very fast allowing very short amount of time between recodes and less likelihood of getting dusted. Now the lacquer that is used by industry is probably a product that is a little bit more heavy duty a little bit more industrial than what we're looking at here, meaning it has greater wearability than the stuff that you're gonna get off the shelf at a home center. It's also specifically designed to be sprayed that's the problem for most home hobbyist woodworkers is that if you don't have the facility to spray lacquer it can be difficult to apply, unless you look for an aerosol can of lacquer or you specifically look for brushable lacquers like this one, if it's called a brushable lacquer it's gonna level out nice with a brush and it's gonna look good on your project, and it's gonna provide a little bit better durability than the shellac or the oil. The downside to it is it's water resistance and it's alcohol resistance is good, but not great. You want the best of that world, you wanna come up here to varnish. Now, when we talk about varnish varnish means varnish and polyurethane. Polyurethane is a little bit more scratch resistant than something that's just called a varnish. The good news about the varnish is that it's very, very brush friendly. Which means for most home hobbyist without spray equipment this is a finish that levels out very nice under a brush. The reason for that is that it dries slowly. Now think about the negative aspect of a slow dry time that means you've got this open in your shop on project for a long time. Lots of opportunity for stuff to sift out of the air and end up in the top of your project. So that slow cure time helps with brushing more problematic as far as getting stuff in the finish goes. And what we do need to do here is make sure that between coats you're sanding your project out nicely. We gotta get some tooth between coats. In other words that first coat has to get roughed up a little bit in order for the second coat to be 100% sure of having good adhesion. On the end here I've got some water based poly we can drop that into the polyurethane category and it does offer better wear and durability than lacquer does not quite as good as a solvent-based polyurethane. So again, step back from that shelf at the home center where all those products are keeping your mind four categories oil, shellac, lacquer, varnishes, and remember the workability and wearability characteristics of each one and you'll be able to pick the right finish out for your show.
I made wall plaques with inscriptions. The hand-lettering artist used acrylic paint, and she insisted on starting with unfinished wood. NOW, I want to finish the plaques. Sanding between finish layers will be problematic since I do not want to knock off the raised hand lettering. I thought to use water-based Minwax Satin Polycrylic for the brush-friendly, quick- drying attributes. How to resolve my sanding problem? Thank you for your time.
When should you use a wax finish? What are the pro's and cons? My project is an oak headboard. I've stained it with Min Wax true black.
<strong> Ticket 19611 Im about finished with building a crib for my first child. Im still deciding on finish, what are your thoughts on Rubio Monocoat? Is it worth the money? Or do you think I can get the exact same effect from something ill find at the hardware store? Any input from anyone would be awesome!
Can I put Poly over the Watco Danish Oil?
I was not aware you could use shellac in between coats of poly. Question; Is that recommended, and for what reason? Would it be strictly for adhesion purposes or does the shellac between coats add an extra dimension to the finished piece ? For my first coat I always use equal parts of tung oil, poly and mineral spirits and I apply it with 400 grit wet/dry while constantly wiping off the slurry as I go to get the smoothest surface I can. I sand between coats w/600 grit wet/dry dipped in Min. spirits and then wipe it down. Is this the point when I should apply the shellac, before and after each coat of my rubbing poly? Do you think it would enhance the finished look? Thanks
There is a world of difference between water-borne products (mostly acrylic) and oil-based varnishes. They "cure" differently and at much different rates, they're chemically different, and often they have different coloring properties.
Normally, you can intermix oil-based products (oil, mineral spirits, and oil-based varnishes) in any proportions. Be aware though, that unless it says 100% pure tung oil, you are getting one of the imposter "Tung Oil Finishes" most of which don't contain tung oil as an ingredient or component of varnish. They are normally either thinned varnishes or oil-varnish blends. Of course, the real question is "Why would you want to do this?" Tung oil has a mystique about it that I don't understand. It's more expensive, harder to apply, if you mess up application, you have to strip and start over, and provides no real advantages over boiled linseed oil. In fact, the Watco Danish Oil shown in the video is not "oil" but an oil-varnish blend. While it's undergone several owners in the last 30 years, the most recent formulation I found was roughly 2/3 mineral spirits (which thins the solution and evaporates away, contributing nothing to the final finish), 2/9 linseed oil, and 1/9 varnish, with traces of driers and/or colorants. It's just a shame that manufacturers persist in deceptive labeling and naming of their products. It makes what should be simple science into confusing and misleading information.
I put the pol over the Watco oil all the time. It works fine and is easy to repair.
can you put Poly overtop of Lacquer like you can with Shellac?