How To Apply Water Based Polyurethane | (3 EASY STEPS)

hi guys welcome to golden grove woodworks and today we're going to be talking about how to apply a water-based polyurethane and we're going to be applying this on a high top table that we're preparing for a customer and we're going to go over some do's and don'ts and we're going to show you i've seen a couple different ways on how it's been applied and i'm going to go over how i apply it and it seems to work just fine so let's jump right into the video okay guys let's jump right into step one so we're going to take out any of the imperfections on the table and kind of rough the surface just a little bit and for that we're going to be using this very fine grit sandpaper you can pick it up pretty much at any of your local hardware stores and like i said before this is just going to really take out any of the imperfections if you had maybe you know a little piece of sawdust under there or you know you find a little bit of rays in the poly which you know you didn't happen to see before and i mean overall it's just going to allow for a smoother finish and you really when you do this you're just going to do it very slowly you're not going to you know burn it right down to the wood you're just going to take a little layer off the top and we'll take a look at what that looks like now so here we go guys we're just going to go ahead and start in one of the corners and we're just going to kind of very slowly not a ton of pressure just until you start to see it a little bit and at that point i mean you're pretty much taking off a little bit of a layer and you don't want to go crazy fast because if you go extremely fast on this it is going to burn it right down i've taken it down on one table right down uh to basically the stain and i was applying you know three four coats of poly and it looked like the first coat i applied so you don't want to take a whole bunch off somewhat around what you can see you know right here on the side see how there's a little bit of that that white haze over this first board here that's pretty much all you're looking for and you're just going to go ahead and go through the rest of the table like that and then we'll move on to step two you want to go with the grain you don't want to go this way across the table you always want to go with your grain whichever way your boards are facing so on these two by fours on the end we're going to be running it parallel with it and then same with the the center boards located here and this is the way that i found the best method there's probably other methods out there different grit sandpapers i prefer the 320 i haven't had an issue with it and the 320 grit seems like it's a little bit you know it's fine enough to where you're not going to be burning a whole bunch off as long as you're not applying a great amount of pressure um i feel with something lower like a 120 uh maybe even a 180 you might you know if you're applying a little bit too much pressure you're going to take off much more than you so now guys along with prepping the table the next quick step you're going to do is just use a shop vac um you can use an air compressor and basically blow the air off of it but i choose to use a shop vac because it doesn't put all the particles into the air and then it just settles right back down onto the table so i just use the shop vac and go ahead and suck as much as i can for the kind of top layer of poly that we sanded off and then we'll jump into the mineral spirits so so so [Applause] but guys when you're using the shop vac for the knots that um aren't full of poly yet you're going to want to make sure how i went around kind of just placed it over top of the knots um some of that really some of that dust really likes to sit in those knots so it's great that's what i love about the shop vac it just pulls right out of there and the mineral spirits when you put it over it's not necessarily going to get that out of those knots due to you know it's not going to go all the way through the board therefore it's great to just pull it out with a shop vac and i don't have a brush attachment for the shop vac i will be getting one but i kind of just cut my hand around the end of the shop vac such like that and that's how i just kind of go around the table i don't rub the surface exactly on the table because if i did that then you know obviously it would get some scratches on there so now we're going to finish the cleaning process by applying a v m and p naphtha mineral spirit i went with a clean strip brand i it was what they had at my local store and you can they have multiple brands out there i did a little bit of research this one seemed to be a pretty good use for what we're trying to do here so you don't want to use water mainly because it can discolor your wood it can split it crack it swell it not not great stuff when you use water regardless of if you have a coat of poly on it or not um because you know you might not have hit all the spots you might not hit all the spots and therefore you know if you get a little bit of water in one of the seams you don't want to take that chance mineral spirits you wipe on um it's a great way to show a little bit of where you're going to have your main highlights of the wood and then it also it dries very quickly and let's get to applying it and also remember just a side note this is toxic use it in a well ventilated area or with a mask and to apply this i'm just going to use a simple paper towel you can use rags or a paint brush if you really wanted to but i basically just splashed a little bit onto it like this and you basically go ahead and start wherever you want it's not not too important and you're just going to go ahead and wipe it down and it's pretty cool to see all of the dust just comes right off of the table this is a really really quick process and i mean it ensures basically you you could go ahead and just you know vacuum it blow it off but um you're gonna still see some of the uh some of the dust particles so it's basically just a simple wipe down to this it dries extremely quickly and you give it you know half an hour to dry and then you're ready to go ahead and put a coat of poly on they do recommend to do this between every coat of poly um which i do i do do the sanding and then i do the mineral or i do the sanding and then i blow it off or vacuum it and then i go ahead and put the mineral spirits on i mean you're putting a lot of time into these tables or chairs or whatever you're building and you know just this little extra step of the quick sanding process and to go ahead and wipe it down with mineral spirits it really doesn't take more than you know 10 minutes you know even for a small tail like this it'll probably take you know it probably takes about three minutes that's a quick quick step and i wouldn't recommend skipping it so now we're going to move on to step two the moment everyone's been waiting for and we're going to apply the pollen so the poly we're going to be using today is a minwax one coat polyurethane says three times the protection in one coat it is water based as we mentioned before and we are using soft wood here for this table top it is douglas fir two by sixes and two by fours and generally a lot of videos that i've seen people are applying a thinner coat and letting it dry and sanding it down applying another coat and they'll apply you know up to probably seven coats on on a tabletop the issue i saw that i ran into personally was i would put a coat on and uh go ahead and sand it and i find out that i was pressing relatively hard but i was sanding it right down to uh the the stain and you know i put another coat on the next day and then let it dry and then go right back down to the stain once i sanded it again so i put a pretty generous coat of polyurethane on here i'm not saying to take the whole court and you know dump it over top uh kind of like epoxy but i i do put a generous coat on it it is going to show uh cloudiness over the whole table uh it will dry if you have say put a good generous coat on you wake up the next day and look at the table and it still has some cloudiness to it well let it continue to dry so i'm just using a valspar brush two and a half inch you're going to want to use a good brush for your poly and make sure you don't mix it with your paint brushes so we're going to go ahead and i'll show you kind of just how you just want to get good amount of poly on here and i don't have a specific i mean way you can put it on however you really want to you know you can you can go however you want a lot of people have you know they only go one way and then they'll come back one way but for me i just put a generous amount on here and i just get a good coating and then i go ahead and you just want to end it right at the start where it starts to meet into the next board and then you can smooth it and then i go right up to it and i smooth it out and if you find little places you missed it's not a big deal if you overlap onto the board you're going to be going on to next because you'll smooth that over the next one i put a little extra in the knots i don't i usually generally fill them up uh pretty much full um because those take pretty much the longest to dry you know because you have the most poly in there um but you want to fill those up because you're not good i mean if you're using this as a food table you're not going to want to have you know food getting down in there and all that that bad stuff so so that's basically uh kind of the look to it of how cloudy it's going to be uh just wanted to check it there on the camera make sure the angle is still good and we'll just go through on this next one make sure you get all the edges of the board i just ensure that it's covered i mean i could hit on the next pass but i just like to make sure it's covered right now and keep going forward here and you can really i mean i know i keep going back to this but you can really see how cloudy this is looking and i'm telling you i'll show you the dining room table that my girlfriend and i had built and it looked the identical same way i put seven coats of poly on that and the first four coats i basically sanded right off so um with that being said uh i kind of was over the point of putting so many coats on that it kind of just got cumbersome and it wasn't uh really showing a bunch of results on it hardwood on the other hand um i believe holds i haven't done a hardwood table yet so don't quote me but i believe it holds the poly a little bit better uh than this soft wood uh it doesn't necessarily probably soak in as much therefore when you put the next coat on it's gonna it's gonna stay uh when you're saying it whatever the first coat it's gonna be a little bit more on top of it it's not gonna soak in so much so i'm gonna go ahead and i'm gonna finish up this table and then i'll show you kind of an overview of what it's going to look like afterwards well everyone there you have it step three is to sit back relax let the poly work its magic and in about 24 hours as long as the cloudiness is gone you have a finished product and you're ready to go in and apply the next coat this area here is an end table that we built here at golden grove woodworks and this is a finished product this has only two coats of poly on it you can see all the cloudiness is gone it's got a nice reflection onto it and a lot some people not everyone isn't the hugest fan of the water-based finish in the polyurethane they say it leaves a little bit too clear almost like a plasticky look over the table i'm quite the fan of it it's worked really good we did a six foot by three foot dining room table in it we're gonna do another one of these end tables and we're doing uh for our first customer a high top table so if you guys like this video like and subscribe and until next time we might jump into building uh one of the blanket holders or maybe a little entryway shoe rack and if there's anything that you would like to see in particular then shoot us down in the comments and let us know what you'd like to see on the channel alright until next

Channel: Home Reno Made Ez

Views: 76,977

Keywords: polyurethane, polyurethane finish, polyurethane coats, polyurethane dry time, water based polyurethane, mineral spirits, indoor polyurethane, outdoor polyurethane, one coat polyurethane, polyurethane applicators, polyurethane brushes, sanding polyurethane, applying polyurethane, polyurethane runs, polyurethane puddles, polyurethane tips, how to apply, how to apply polyurethane, polyurethane on stain, polyurethane over stain, minwax

Id: Oc0ljuB2i98

Length: 16min 3sec (963 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 16 2020