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| Leave it to the pro. Michael Dresdner, a nationally known wood finishing and woodworking expert, has answered hundreds of common wood finishing questions in Varathane’s Q&A library to help you successfully complete your project. Click on a link to the left for help and solid advice. |
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| "I am building a display case and when I use mineral spirits to clean after sanding, the defects show up darker. It will be stained darker. I tried using scrap walnut, wood filler, and stainable glue mixed with walnut dust from the project. Do you have any other ideas?"
Before you get too concerned, test your various repair methods under stain, but on another piece of scrap walnut. You may find that any of the three methods will look fine after staining, even though they don’t under mineral spirits. If all look too dark, try a two stage approach. Start by using a lighter colored wood putty. After the first coat of finish has been applied, go back and hide the lighter area with touch up markers or additional stain, thus making it almost invisible. You’ll find it is far easier to make a light area darker than to try to hide a dark area. |  | |
| "My new doors have arrived with numerous unfilled nail holes. Where does filling nail holes come in the process of sealing, pore-filling, staining and finishing? Is there a product you would recommend for filling the holes?"
Filling nail holes comes first in the process. Use wood putty to fill the holes slightly proud, then when it dries completely, sand it flush to the surrounding wood. Make sure you sand off everything that is not in the nail hole. When you are finished, you should have an exact outline of the hole, not a larger, amorphous "puddle" of putty. If you putty holes prior to the last sanding of the door, the entire surface, including the area around the putty, will have been sanded to the same grit. This is important, as any differences in sanding will show up during staining.
There are a number of wood putties on the market in a wide range of colors, and in both waterbased and solvent based versions. Make sure you are getting wood putty, and not oil putty. Wood putty is meant to go onto raw wood, dry completely, and be sanded flush. Oil putty is for filling holes after the finish is on. It stays flexible indefinitely, and may not be compatible under some finishes. For whatever reason, most oil putties are sold in transparent tubes and jars, while wood putties are almost always in opaque containers. Read the directions or ask a clerk for help so that you get the right material.
Choose a putty color that closely matches the wood, or mix your own color by adding pigments to the putty. Use artist’s acrylics for waterbased putty, and artist’s oils for solvent based putty. If you can’t hit it exactly, go a shade lighter. After the first coat of finish has dried, you can go back and touch up any light spots, but it is far more difficult to make a dark area lighter than it is to make a light area darker. | | |
| "I just finished staining and putting one coat of oil based polyurethane
polyurethane on a pine toy box. It looks great, but feels really rough when you rub your hand across it. What is the best way from this point to make the finish smoother?"
A: Sand it. Forgive me if that sounds glib, but in fact, that is the right
course of action.
It’s not at all unusual for a first coat, or even a later coat of finish, to
come out rough. Sand gently between coats and make sure the surface is
smooth before you apply a second coat. Use 320 grit self-lubricating
(stearated) sandpaper, which will sand without clogging, and be gentle,
because you don’t want to sand through the finish and remove the stain. Sand
only enough to smooth out the roughness, then recoat. Do this between each
coat, if necessary, so that you always apply finish onto a smooth surface.
If your last coat is still a bit rough, let it cure for a week or so, then
sand very lightly with 400 grit paper, and follow by rubbing the finish with
0000 steel wool loaded with paste wax as a lubricant. Wipe off the wax
immediately afterward, and you will have a smooth, satin finish that feels
delightful. | | |
| "I bought an old dresser that was painted white. I tried a spray-on
stripper, which took some of the finish off, but the rest just slides around
all over the dresser. What should I do?"
One reality of stripping finish is that it matters not how easily the
paint remover goes on, because the difficult and messy part is taking it
off.
The key to successfully using stripper is to let the chemical do the work.
That means leaving the piece wet with stripper until the finish will come
off all the way down to the raw wood. Once the finish is soft all the way
down, remove as much as you can quickly with a putty knife. Don’t worry if
the putty knife leaves some gunk. The goal is to remove the lion’s share,
then switch tools. If the putty knife does not easily remove the paint,
re-wet the piece with more stripper and let it soften all of the paint
before you tackle it again.
Here comes the messy part. Suit up with gloves, goggles, an apron, long
sleeves, and a respirator, and make sure the room you are working in has
good ventilation. Once the bulk of the paint is off, but while the remaining
gunk is still wet and liquid, use stiff scrub brushes and coarse Scotchbrite
or steel wool to scrub the remaining residue off. I like to repeatedly dip
the scrubber into a pan of paint remover or lacquer thinner to help dislodge
and flow off any remaining paint. (Bear in mind that lacquer thinner is very
flammable, as are some paint removers.) If at any point the paint does not
come off easily, stop, reapply more stripper, and wait until it is softened.
As you scrub with lacquer thinner, clean wood should be revealed. Wipe off
the piece with paper towels to remove the thinner and residue. Once the wood
looks clean, go over it again using a clean scrubber doused with mineral
spirits. Wipe it off and let it dry. By morning, the wood should look raw,
clean as a whistle, and ready to sand. |
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