Finishing 2 Faces Made Easy
George VondriskaDescription
When it comes to finishing projects, there can be challenges. Let’s do everything we can to eliminate challenges, and make finishing as simple as possible. Here’s a trick that will help your finishing move along a little faster; finishing both faces of a project in one go.
I have to say that for a lot of years I would put finish on one face of a piece and let it thoroughly dry before flipping it over to finish the other face. I ended up with a job that required putting new finish on almost two dozen table tops. My friend Charlie has a bigger shop than mine, so I took the tables to his place.
When the time came to apply finish, I started following my standard procedure. With finish on one face I was ready to leave for the day. That’s when Charlie yelled at me, “Why not finish the finishing?” Charlie’s standard approach is to finish the back first, carefully flip the parts so the back surface is on finish points, and then finish the front. I don’t know why, but it never occurred to me that I could do this.
Potential downside?
When you flip the parts over and set the back on finish points, you might leave tiny marks in the finish. In many applications this doesn’t matter; the bottom face of table top, the back face of a cabinet back…there are many places you can get away with this. You can take a completely different approach when finishing both sides of a door.
Finishing can be a challenge
There’s no faster way to ruin a project than to mess up the finishing process. We know how intimidating finishing can be, so we’ve put together lots of wood finishing videos to help you out.
My finishing started going much faster, thanks to my friend Charlie. Do not tell him I'm giving him credit for this. Back in the day, what I used to, pretty commonly do was, I'd spray a face, and then I would let that completely dry, and then I would flip it over, and I would spray the other face. So, I was actually working on table tops with my friend Charlie one day and I sprayed one side, and I sprayed the backs and walked away, and he said, "What are you doing?", and I said, "I'm waiting for that to dry, so we can flip them over later". He said no, just flip them over now, who cares, it's the back. So, the more I thought about this, he was in a position, where he, big commercial cabinet shop, it's all about getting stuff out the door. So, his look at stuff was, bam, bam time is money. That being said, I have found this is a really good approach to finishing, Whether you're spray and finish, like I'm about to, or you're wiping it on, here's a way to look at this. What I'm gonna do, is spray the back of this first. I'm gonna then flip it on painters pyramids, and spray the front, and we'll come back later, after the finish is dry and look at the back, and honestly, the marks there are so negligible. So, if this is a table top, and that's the bottom of the top, if it's a solid wood top for a dresser, and it's the bottom of the top. These are all scenarios where, like this, this is gonna hang on the wall, so even if there were tiny little marks from the painters pyramids on here, it's not gonna make a big difference. But, like I said, I think what you'll see, is that the marks left behind by those things, are so negligible, it's just not worth thinking about. Now, I'm spraying lacquer, and I know people always ask about this. So, we've got an exhaust fan running, and that's evacuating the junk out of the air, that's why I don't have a mask on, as we're pulling a lot of air past this work surface. Now here's the thing, when you're gonna do this, what I want to do is, spray the back, but not come around the edges much, because what I want to be able to do is, grab it, flip it, and not have my hands on wet finish, when I do that. So, I really just want to hit the horizontal here. Now, I can hit everything, because I don't need for this, to, I don't need to worry about touching these edges any more. All right, I'll wrap this up, lacquer dries crazy fast, so we'll come back in just a little bit, and I'll show you the back, and you can see, if we can even find any marks left by those pyramids, and what you think of this process. All right, let's do the reveal. This lacquer has been drying, I dunno, about an hour, it's dry enough to touch, lacquer dries crazy fast. Here's our front, and then, give you kind of a glancing look across the back and stuff, and I got finish on it, and the look across the back is, are there unsightly marks left by those painters pyramids that would make us say, "I'm never doing that again", and honestly, with both looking at it and touching it, there is nothing here that would prevent me from using this technique again. So, just, you know, it's a little dose of reality, and a little dose of keeping your projects moving along a little bit faster. Get the finish on the back, flip it over on some kind of pyramid, or other finishing points, finish the front, and it's all good, and it's gonna keep things moving along a little quicker.
This is a great technique for spraying or maybe even brushing. If you are rubbing on a finish, there is a potential for marks or even dents on the top surface while finishing the back. I learned this when using rounded plastic pyramids while applying an oil finish. The rubbing motion moved the board around and left marks on the unfinished top.
This is essentially the same as when you look at furniture that was made before (say) 1930, if you look at the back, it's ugly! Saw marks, written instructions, poor joinery, you name it. The reason is obvious, the craftsmen at the time were also looking at the bottom line, getting the product out the door. They didn't need to make the back of a cabinet pretty, it was going against the wall, no one could see it anyway. so why spend time on making it pretty? My early furniture had very pretty backs. Once I realized this issue, my backs aren't so pretty now but I'm onto my next project earlier!
You could also attach or plan how a table top would be attached to the rest of the table, then use these screw holes to hold or support the top while the complete project is being finished. I have used the screw holes with screws similar to the final screws to hang a piece from a support while I finish the whole project at one sitting. Or you could use screws in these holes in place of painters triangles.
What spray did you use?
I’ll have to watch this video again. Rather than listening to any of it, I spent the whole time wallowing in clamp envy.
You can make your own painter's points using bottle caps and sheetrock screws. Put the screw through the center of the bottle cap from the bottom so that the head is flush with the edge and the point extends above the top.