Easy Wood Finish - Secrets to a PERFECT Finish

hi i'm rob cosm welcome to my shop i'm going to show you how to spray lacquer and in this one we're going to focus on small boxes finish is the make or break of anything that you build i'm going to show you why i chose lacquer and give you all the tips and tricks that i've gained hopefully it'll help you i'm rob cosman and welcome to my shop we make it our job to help take your woodworking to the next level if you're new and you haven't subscribed please do so hit the notification bell so you'll receive alerts when we release a new video and anytime we use a special tool we always leave a description down below alright let's get to work it's really easy to get carried away with finishes there's so many options out there but you have to remember this that back in the time when furniture was built by hand the guy who built it was rarely the same person who did the finishing that was a separate trade most people that are woodworking today are doing is a hobby you have three or four weekends a month at most to spend on it you really don't have the time to devote to getting extremely good at multiple types of finishes so my game plan has always been have two finishes one's an oil one's a lacquer do those two then you're going to get proficient enough that you actually get pretty good at it i'm going to show you some examples and i'm also going to give you some of the reasons why i prefer lacquer over oil or oil over lacquer for different circumstances i'll start off with this one this is a cherry jewel chest that i made for my first daughter i think i made it in 1987. it's uh it's been oiled i use a tongue oil nice thing about oil is that it penetrates the wood and it gives it some real depth one of the downsides is takes multiple coats maybe six or seven in order to get any level of protection and each coat needs a day to dry that means you're going to have it around that much longer for it possibly to get dinged it's also difficult to apply oil in the inside if you're going to have something like a leather bottom and not wanting to get the oil on it it's very difficult however it feels great and it has a completely different look now here's an example of the spray finish nice advantage of this is the fact that you can spray three times inside of an hour and a half and be done and it sits on the surface and what i like about lacquer versus other sprayed finishes is that lacquer instead of having multiple layers each layer blends into the previous one so you just end up with essentially one layer that just keeps getting thicker now i don't spray the inside i do spray the inside of the lid before i attach it so that it helps to stabilize that solid wood lid but the outside is done i'm actually going to show you that today how i go through that process these are also our what i would call high traffic people are touching them a lot so the finish needs to be a little more durable the downside to oil is you don't have quite the same level of protection but you have to decide what you want here's a piece i made way back in 1980 or 87 as well and this one is done out of white oak and english brown oak and this has an oil finish and it has stood up well however it's mostly sat on a on a desk and never got used very much so it has not had a lot of use and abuse now here's an example of something we're building right now and this is where i like a lacquer finish this is cherry it's called a standing desk people are going to be touching it all the time so the lacquer is going to give you a lot more protection and it's it it's a great finish better than any other type of spray on finish this particular brand and i'll share that with you i think is fantastic and again the fact that you can spray sand spray sand spray inside of an hour and a half is a real advantage anyway you have to decide on what you're doing and i'm going to give you some applications on what you need to think about when it comes to deciding what type of finish but from here what i want to do is walk you through the entire process of how i would go from having a box and having it completely finished and ready to present if you're going to spray lacquers in particular you have to be aware that there's a danger both the fumes in terms of being explosive and also the fact that they're dangerous for your lungs so you want to make sure you have a proper respirator that will deal with those types of vapors and it's it needs to be a charcoal filter now there's two different types of lacquer that i use and two different applications applicators this is an hvlp which stands for high velocity low pressure but the problem with this is it has enough pressure that if you're going to try to spray a small box you're going to blow it right off the table so i saved that for my furniture this is what i use and i'll stay right now i don't have any endorsement from these folks i just love this product i was introduced to it way back in the mid 80s and i fell in love with it because it is it makes such a beautiful finish it doesn't have great water resistance so you need to bear that in mind if you're using something that's going to be near wet hands but as far as the final finish i've never found anything that competes with it this is a semi-gloss they offer it and i know they offered in gloss and semi-gloss i would actually prefer to be a little duller than semi-gloss if i could find it the uh the spray tip is probably one of the biggest advantages it just lays that finish on there like a just like a fine mist it's fantastic you'll see what i mean we're actually going to demonstrate it like i said you need your mask but the next thing we're going to do with the first thing we're going to do is we're actually going to make a little turntable because if you're going to do small boxes it's nice to be able to spray them spin them around but you also have to have a way of spraying the bottom and dealing with the top and the sides as well and i'm going to show you how you can do it all at once with the way we set up this little turntable all right to make my little turntable i need something fairly heavy for the bottom so i've got a piece of one-inch mdf i'm going to make the turntable itself at a piece of quarter inch plywood and i'm just going to draw it or use a compass to cut a round disc or lay out a round disc i'll cut it on the band saw may as well get it as big as this piece will allow you could use anything for this it just needs to be stout enough to hold some nails you'll see what i mean after we've cut this out all right now quick trip over to the bandsaw now we want to drill a hole through the disc and down into there i'll do this one first not want to go into my bench now i want this one to be as at least as big as the screw so that there's no resistance and it freely turns okay that'll work now before we do that what we're going to do is i'm going to use a grex gun and it's got a 23 gauge three quarter inch nail and i'm going to put several of them through the disc and we'll use that to hold yeah i better put some on the outside too just in case we got something a little bigger [Music] now if you don't have a nail gun you can always just use a hammer and some finished nails now put this through the disc i'm going to put a couple of washers on there just to make it spin a little easier there now the idea is we can go in set it like on the top spray the bottom and then flip it over yeah we didn't space that right now there it is and then spray the top and then you don't have having a line where you are dealing with over spray just makes it a whole lot easier i'll show you when we actually do it all right i want to do a dry run first because when i have the mask on you're not going to be able to hear me so we'll set this on the lid carefully of course you gotta shake this up now when you do when you spray this you you don't wanna go like this in a in an arc you wanna have the nozzle parallel to the board at all time and i would prefer to actually be down here but i'm not going to do the sides right now we'll do the top so we're going to go in here about six to eight inches away go across stop spraying start spraying go across stop spraying start spraying come back so always always keep your strokes or your nozzle parallel to the surface that you're spraying and don't do that fan like that you'll you'll end up having a little bit of material here and a lot in the middle and then so what we're going to do here on the lid we've got to hit it at a 45 so we can get this the that inside edge of the side so we'll go one one one one and then we'll do a stroke one maybe two across the bottom as soon as that's done we'll reach down here where it's not wet flip it over set it on there like so and then we'll do the uh we'll do the sides first and and try to i'm going to try to get down here so that i'm i'm parallel to the to the side as opposed up here in an angle that way you're going to get this way you're going to get an even distribution of the finish you're going to get a lot you're going to get more here than you are down there so we want to be down here we'll go straight across maybe twice turn that do the same thing on the end do the same thing here same thing here and then we'll go one two possibly three on there and then of course we're going to put three different coats on there so we'll have to let it dry in between obviously you want to make sure you get all the dust off uh [Applause] all right that's only been 10 minutes after the first coat and what i sometimes do it doesn't feel rough at all but i'll just take my hand and just use it as a sandpaper so i don't have to sand in between the first and second coat and maybe even well i just take that back i'll i will stand between the second and third or the just before the final coat depending on what the second one looks like now you'll notice it was a little bit windy out here so i was having to hold the gun or the spray can closer than i normally would and for that reason for on the final coat i may actually do it inside just to avoid wind disrupting the spray okay i'll do those corners as well you probably never saw anyone use their hand as sandpaper before but i find it works especially if the finish is dry to the touch but seems it's still shall we say malleable all right same procedure do the bottom first try to grab it from down below so you're not touching anything wet when you lay it on to do the top so hey all right well that's drying i want to make a sanding block and i'm going to use this foam and the reason is we're going to use very very fine sandpaper and if you use a hard block first of all if you just use your fingers you're only going to get pressure right underneath your fingertips doesn't do a very good job even if you fold the sandpaper it doesn't do a very good job if you put the sandpaper right on a hard block like that well it's only going to touch the high spots and there it surface may not be perfectly flat i didn't hand plane it i sanded it so i'm going to use this material and it'll just allow the pressure to disperse nicely and we should it should do a really good job so just see what we've got two inches so i'm going to cut a two inch strip of this mdf now we're going to use that adhesive you should be able to you can either use double-sided tape or spray adhesive i've got some double-sided tape right here so we'll try that make sure that's on well so so all right that'll hold on well now i'm going to use some 400 grit paper and that's all we'll do between the second and the final coat okay two coats it doesn't feel bad this actually feels good and smooth so i don't really need to go and do anything at all to that so i've got a strip of 400 grit paper just wrap that around don't need a lot i just want to get rid of any little nibs from the dust that drops onto the wet finish i'm trying not to round over the corners or where the finish through on the corners so exit before you get all the way you know past the halfway point with your block now on this one i'll just do it sideways like that so i can get or i can stay square on that little piece if you try to do it this way you tend to rock now i don't that doesn't feel rough at all so i'm not going to bother with any of those little chamfers but on the lid i'm going to do that separate from the top edges of the box ends [Music] uh yeah try not try not to wreck that sharp edge because that makes it nice and nice and close fitting when the lid is shut okay now we'll blow off that dust pardon what happened i didn't do that end another nice feature about lacquer is that if there's any sanding dust left in the pores of the wood the lag the next coat will actually just melt them melt and that'll blend right in and i forgot to mention on this nozzle you can actually turn it so you either have a fan that goes this way or you can turn it so the fan goes that way of course i leave it the way it is which is the fan's vertical okay [Music] uh [Music] so in case you're wondering that's fiddleback maple with macassar ebony on the ends and the lid fits nice snug i don't put any finish at all on the inside only on the inside of the lid that'll help so that it gives off moisture or absorbs it somewhat evenly and that it's narrow enough it should stay flat i always break this joint with a little chamfer on both sides so that it doesn't if there's any discrepancy it doesn't show there's your wood hinge on the back that's a great finish it gets a little harder with with a bit of time but it's dry to the touch in about 10-15 minutes at the most i have you like my work if you like my style of teaching click on any one of these videos to help take your woodworking to the next level and i've always said better tools make it a whole lot easier if you click on the icon with the plane in the chisel it'll take you to our website introduce you all of our tools and also talk to you about our online and in-person workshops good luck in your woodwork

Channel: RobCosman.com

Views: 71,563

Keywords: easy wood finish, easy wood finish products, easy wood finishing techniques, best wood finish, finish, wood finishing, best wood finishing techniques, how to finish a wood box, how to finish wood, lacquer finish, lacquer finish on wood, spray lacquer finish on wood, rob cosman, woodworking

Id: LzLnGgtm4cc

Length: 22min 29sec (1349 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 11 2020