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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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| Q: I just stripped and sanded down a pine table. There are many screw holes to fill and I cannot decide if I should use a dark walnut wood filler or a natural wood filler. I am going to be staining the table a dark walnut stain.
A: Generally speaking, you are better off matching the filler to the raw wood, since it will take stain. The problem is that different fillers take stain differently, and different woods take stain differently as well. You need to make samples of the filler you have chosen to see how it will behave after staining.
Get some scrap pine, put a few gouges in it, fill them with the wood filler you have chosen, and stain it with the stain you have decided on. Look and see whether the filler comes out lighter, darker or the same as the wood. That will give you a leg up on how to handle the problem.
My favorite way is to use a filler that after staining is just a bit lighter than the wood. After the first coat of finish, go back and touch up the spots to match using either acrylic artist colors on a small artist’s brush, or use touch up markers to blend the spots prior to the next coat of finish. |  | |
| Q: Will black waterbased brushing lacquer go over and bond to India ink sealed with oil based sealer?
A: India ink is sold in both waterbased and oil based solvencies, though these days waterbased is vastly more common. Waterbased finish will go very nicely over waterbased ink, though it will cause it to bleed up into the finish. While one could argue it makes little sense to stain wood black, then coat it with black lacquer, it is in fact often done so that if the finish chips, it will show black wood beneath instead of a white spot of natural wood color.
That said, I will point out that I would avoid putting waterbased lacquer over any oil based sealer, or even oil based ink alone. While some waterbased topcoats bond rather well, even to dried and cured oils, the particular brand you mentioned has a track record of not bonding well to oil based stains or sealers. | | |
| Q: I am building kitchen cabinets of birch and maple plywood. I applied a coat of gel polyurethane because I like the amber color it provides. I would like to spray the topcoats using an HVLP conversion gun. Can I apply a waterborne lacquer over the gel, and would it help to apply Zinsser Bullseye SealCoat first as a tie coat?
A: Yes, and yes. You can put waterbased lacquer over the polyurethane after sealing with SealCoat, but I am at a loss as to why you would want to do that. The gel urethane is easier to apply, easier to get even (since you wipe it back off) and is more durable than waterbased lacquer, especially for a kitchen. If it were mine, I’d simply add more coats of oil based urethane, either in the gel form or liquid form. | | |
| Q: I ran out of denatured alcohol and used isopropyl to clean out a brush. Is there any problem doing this just for cleaning up a brush I used for shellac? Is there anything left on the brush that would contaminate shellac if I used this brush again?
A: Nope, there is no problem and no residue from using pure isopropyl alcohol. In case you were curious, methanol or wood alcohol is one carbon backbone alcohol, ethanol or grain alcohol (which is the vast majority of most denatured alcohol offerings) is two carbon, and propynol or isopropyl alcohol is three carbon. All will work just fine, though propyl will be a bit thicker and slower, though not enough for you to notice. By the way, don’t confuse isopropyl alcohol with rubbing alcohol from the pharmacy – that is 50% water mixed in alcohol and will not work as a solvent for shellac, and is not much good for cleaning up shellac either. |
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