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Furniture Finishes 101

Tuesday, June 19th, 2018

Hooker Furniture Finish: A deep, dark clear finish on walnut, cherry, mappa burl and ebony veneers is highlighted by champagne-colored tipping on carvings and top edges along with chiseling that gives character to the marquetry patterns for a time-worn character.

Before you begin shopping for your next furniture piece, you need to know a few things about the finish’s appearance, what method was used in creating it, and how durable it is. Finishing is one of the biggest fears of woodworkers. While they can be confident in joinery or even intricate designs, they could very easily take a step back when it comes to applying finishes. Knowing the best finish for a certain woodwork is a crucial obstacle to overcome.

There are many categories of finishing products. These are either based on the working qualities or varying degrees of protection that are applied. Just imagine how many you could choose from – oils, vanishes, shellacs, water-based finishes, and lacquers.

Of course, the different finishes offer different levels of durability, protection, aesthetics, and ease of repair and application. No furniture maker would be able to tell you that a particular finish is better than the rest as there are many factors to consider when applying a specific finish. Be ready to accept some trade-offs when picking the right finish for your furniture.

Wood Finish Types

There are only two major types of wood finish and these are how well each cures or dries. The evaporative finishes include shellac, lacquer, and the water-based finishes. These become hard films as they evaporate. Water isn’t a solvent, though, it is just considered a carrier for the emulsion used on the finishing. This type tends to be less durable because they tend to re-dissolve in their thinning solvent.

Reactive finishes, on the other hand, do have evaporating solvents, too, but they react with the chemical mixed with them or with the air once they’re applied. A kind of chemical change occurs right before application and also when they cure. After this, no re-dissolving happens except in the case of the pure oils where the reactive finish holds better to chemicals and heat.

Anthracite black with light dusty-wax hang up , still from Hooker Furniture.

If you’re thinking of wax as a means of finishing the furniture surface, think again. Most woodworkers only look at this as a furniture polisher. They use these often over shellacs or lacquer finishes.

True oils such as linseed and Tung oils are drying oils. These are referred to as true oils just to set them apart from the non-drying or semi-drying kinds like soybean oil. True oils are altered from liquid to solid in a process called polymerization.

Linseed oil has yet many forms. In its unrefined form, it is the raw linseed oil which is not used often because it takes too long to dry. When boiled, this oil becomes thicker and dries up more quickly, hence, more viable for furniture use.

Tung oil comes naturally from Asian nut trees although these are being cultivated all over the globe now. This comes in its pure, unrefined form and also in the polymerized, heat-treated type. Just like in the case of the linseed oil, the heat treatment makes the oil more durable.

Varnishes are either long-oil or short-oil. The former contain high percentages of oil including spar, marine or exterior varnishes. The long-oil type is more elastic. Short-oil or medium varnishes are also known as baking enamels or heat-set varnish. These are used in industrial applications because they require extreme temperatures to dry.

The varnish and oil blends are mostly oils mixed with just a little varnish. They are easily applied because they are oils and they are protective of the furniture surface because they are varnishes, too. Shellacs, on the other hand, may be thought of as a liquid finish but in its pure form, it is actually resin coming from a bug feeding on trees. These bugs come mostly from Thailand and India.

Lacquers are considered as the go-to all-around finish by many furniture makers. They dry quickly and they provide a different kind of richness to the wood.

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