Finishing Session 3: Application Methods

When it comes to applying finish, it's not uncommon that we're gonna wanna just use a rag for that. And that could be putting stains on, putting some wipe on top coats on and there's rags and there's rags. It's good to draw down a little bit and see what's the best way to do this. So, first off, when you're choosing your rags, we really want these to be a hundred percent cotton. You can do this a couple of ways. You can get a hundred percent cotton bed sheets that you're no longer using, cut those up into shop rags. You can go to home centers or finishing stores and they'll sell boxes or bags of 100% cotton rags. However you get it. The big deal out of this is 100% cotton. Looking at what we have here, there's a problem, especially when we're talking about topcoats. The problem being we're so wrinkly here how are we gonna achieve a good level finish, a good level top coat, even with our stain. And we'll look at this in a second. It's gonna have a tendency with these highs and lows to pull that stain irregularly across the surface. It's better if you make yourself a finishing pad, very easy to do. You need some cheesecloth, you can get cheesecloth just about any place, from grocery stores to home centers. And the cheesecloth is going to become the core. This is the kind of the, the carrier of the finish in our finishing pad. I don't need this whole roll. Cheesecloth is always hard to cut. Yes, the scissors are sharp. Cheesecloth is just hard to cut. There we go. Now, the way that we use this, as we take one of our a 100% cotton rags and this is a little bigger than what I need. This is gonna create the surface with which we do the application, but it's the cheesecloth inside there that's gonna carry the finish. So when we put this together, you wanna be careful. What we're trying to eliminate are all these wrinkles and folds and irregularities. Moral of the story, neatness counts. That looks good. Now, as we close this, we wanna kinda pull these edges up and around And there's gonna be a final step here but I'm gonna get my gloves on first 'cause once I do the final step, I wanna hold onto that. There's our piece of quilted maple, there's our standard everyday cut and rag and our stain. And it's just because of the irregularities in the rag, hard to get the uniform code on here that I want. With stain, we have the benefit of going back and being able to do a wipe off, but with a top coat we can't push so hard and squeegee off the excess. So we're gonna get a better application from our finishing pad. The last step being we're gonna pull these free ends up and then twist the pad. And what we're doing is we're tensioning that fabric across the face here. It's the difference between this and this to get a higher quality finish when we're done. Absorbs really fast. Cause what we needed to do is saturate that cheesecloth inside there with our finish and what we've sorta done is made like a fancy rag based paintbrush. Stain or top coat. This is gonna give you a much more consistent application, which is gonna result in a better quality finish, which is what we're after after all in this class. Recipe for this cotton fabric, cotton rags, cheese cloth in the middle, don't forget that step at the end, it's a really important one of wrapping to pull that nice and tight and you'll get much better results from this than you will from just using a standard rag. If you're gonna put finish on, we better talk about brushes 'cause that's gonna be such a common application procedure for most of us. You gotta make sure you're using the right bristles, you gotta make sure you're using the right tip. So, we can in broad brush categories divide our brushes into two areas here: natural bristles, synthetic bristles. Now here's kind of the counter intuitive easy way to remember this. You use natural bristles with man-made products, you use synthetic bristles with water-based products. So here's what that means, a natural bristle brush is the way to go with anything that's a solvent based like an oil based finished. So, if the solvent for your stain or your top coat is: lacquer thinner, mineral spirits, denatured alcohol, the natural bristle brush is the way to go. If the solvent for your finish is nothing but water, then the synthetic bristle brush is the way to go. That identifies the bristle type. Now we need to talk about the tip type. Get in big broad categories here, we've got two things going. One is a square tip, one is a chisel tip. On a square tip brush oddly enough, the name is just like what it sounds. As we look at the tip of this brush, it's simply squared off. This is the best tip of choice for our putting stains on. The alternative is a chisel tip which looks a lot like the tip of a chisel on this one we've got a taper and a taper meaning then that the tip comes to a sharper edge. This is gonna do better for your top coats. Now think about this and it's gonna make some sense. With our top coats, we wanna have finer control of that application to make sure that we're not quite squeegeeing off but we're controlling how much thickness of finish we're putting on. The reduced contact that we get from that tapered tip, is gonna do a better job of controlling the flow of our top coats. we're with the square tip brush. If I use this with my top coats, there's just too much contact here to give me the fine control that I need to get a nice thin layer of top-coater . Now what we have to do here is get the right bristle in the right tip. The brushes I have here right off the shelf at a home center, nothing real exotic about them but you have to read the labeling, it'll say on the package if it's natural or synthetic. I don't typically find that it tells you the type of tip that you have on there. You've got to open up the package and look at it. And once you examine it, now that you know what you're looking for you'll be able to find the brush that you want. In the perfect world with these chiseled tips, we'll take this one tip for one step further. The other thing I would like to see and you really gotta look at the brush closely for this is that the bristles themselves also taper being wider here at the Farrow than they are at the tip. And it's the same idea here by having that reduced contact down here at the tip it's gonna give us more control and it's gonna make it easier for us to do a better job laying our top coat side. So as you're choosing your brush, make sure that you're picking the right bristle, make sure that you're picking the right tip in order to get the best quality of application. Let's focus for a second about foam brushes 'cause I know someone will ask. Foam brushes are fine for putting your stains on but I wouldn't use them as a top coat application. I have a hard time with them. A couple of things, not getting bubbles, when I'm using them, and then additionally, because the foam edges are hard, I have a hard time not getting ridges in the finish. So I think our bristle brushes are the best way to go for top coats, square tipped or a foam brush are the way to go for applying your stains. With that, you'll make sure you're getting the best possible means to put on your finishes. We've talked about finishing rags and we've talked about brushes and spraying in the world of HVLP and all that kind of stuff. That's another class all by itself but I want to talk a little bit about spraying because we did talk about anilin dye, mixing that with shellac. What if you want to spray a small project with a custom aerosol, this is a wonderful thing to know about available at home centers. We've also got it sourced for you. Here's the deal that comes with a canister and a jar. So in that jar, we can mix our shellac and Anilin dye or you could just pour shellac in there, or you could just pour a stain in there, whatever your finishing needs are. Cap comes off, canister goes on, I now have an aerosol can of whatever that finish is. One of the things that is pretty neat about this is let's say that we apply a finish in the shop and take that project to somebody's house and along the way, that gets a little bit of a scratch in it and then we have to do a repair. Well, we could put the finish in here, do a little sanding on site and use this to hit it with a top coat patch that back in. It's a great thing to know about so that you can make your own finishes, mix them up get them in here and take advantage of the ease of spraying with whatever finish you want to pour into this custom aerosol sprayer.