How To Apply Wipe-On Polyurethane With Glass Smooth Results

so if you're new to adding finish to a project you're in luck today because this is the video for you [Music] [Applause] [Music] one of our favorite things to to use especially for just simplicity and for availability is a minwax wipe-on poly so first of all it's available you can find this at home depot lowe's um you can find this walmart a lot of times and that is huge because yeah there are other stuff out there that are better uh but all they're a little bit most of the time going to be found in a more specialty type store most of the time so one of that's one of the things that we love about this it's just simply it's readily available okay with a wipe on poly like this just shake it up with a brush on poly though do not shake it up it'll get air bubbles and stuff in it that's a whole other thing but with this you can shake it the other thing i want to suggest is just grab yourself some rubber gloves you can get these from harbor freight you can get these anywhere but just get some simple rubber gloves it'll just you're going to thank me later to keep all the crap off your hands okay then we like to keep cool whip containers because of a couple of reasons one they have a lid and so that's huge but two they're just about the right size for polyurethane and stain and so you can just transfer that over into here and then do stain or polyurethane out of these and then if you need to come back in an hour and add another coat or something like that it's great because a cool container has a lid you can slap that lid back on there and then you're good to go um then we're going to use just a t-shirt this is all this is this is a t-shirt that's just been chopped up and cut up and we're going to use that right here on this bar top that we've got so in this particular application what we're using is a bar top that is going to go in our pantry on a cabinet that we're the system that we're doing in there and that is going to basically not ever going to be used for any kind of food prep or anything like that so we're not worried about food safety or anything like that it's mainly just going to have a microwave and some appliances and some other stuff like that on then after you do that like in this case i'm just wiping this off with my hands since this is actually the bottom side of the bar and i'm not as worried about this being perfect keep in mind though normally you'd want to use a tack cloth to get rid of this dust that's generally the best way to get rid of it when you get done with that is just go ahead now and just start applying the finish and what we do is i just take it and i kind of just go in like a circular motion you just kind of think about like how you would almost like you clean a tabletop or something like if you had a washcloth um same kind of thing i'm just going to circular motion here go ahead and just be okay with the fact that as you're going as the piece that you're working on it's going to be drying behind you probably a little bit and you're going to see spots where it's like okay that's dried already i guess i need to go back over it don't go back over just leave it alone put one coat on it and it's gonna kind of especially your first coat it's gonna look a little splotchy because you have to remember this is different than a brush on poly you're doing this in a really really thin coat and so the benefit to this is it's kind of foolproof uh the downside is instead of doing like two coats you might have to i mean depending upon the finish that you're really looking for you might have to do seven um but it but they're super simple to apply and they're kind again like i said they're kind of foolproof now um we generally don't like like super heavy finishes on the stuff that we do we like them to look a little more natural a little more matte so honestly a lot of times we don't really ever do more than three coats so that's just but that's how we like it so you do whatever fits you and remember there are options as far as gloss semi-gloss stuff like that as well when it comes to this so i don't know if you caught that or not but i didn't use gloves when i applied that so i just got finished telling you to put gloves on and then i didn't and honestly the only reason that i noticed that i didn't put them on was because when i got done my hands were kind of sticky and i was like oh crap i should have put on gloves so put on this so a couple of hours of pass so now we're going to put this second coat on and really with the second coat all we're doing is we're just kind of doing it just like we did the first coat i didn't sand between the first and second coat just because personally i don't normally sand between those two coats i usually don't start until the second coat is done and that's when i'll start sanding so if you're finding this content helpful do me a favor and hit that like button also consider subscribing it would mean the world to us now we're at the point where i'm going to put on the third coat and what we're going to do is first of all i'm just going to take and i'm going to use a 320 grit sandpaper and i'm just going to sand lightly and when i say lightly i mean just very little pressure because what we're trying to do is we're trying to knock down any little dust nibs and things like that maybe any kind of imperfections that that have dropped into that finish and then we're gonna it's just gonna knock those down and you're gonna feel it start to get a lot smoother now the bottom of this bar didn't get sanded down as much as the top and so it feels a little rougher but i'm going to flip this over now and what you're going to see here is as i flip this over the other side sanded down a lot better it's actually the top of the bar so when i sand it down it's going to be almost glassy smooth by the time i get done here as i do that you're also going to see that there's kind of a white almost powdery look as you sand this a little bit sometimes and that's just that's just the nature of this what i like to do is i take just a white uh like a just slightly damp paper towel and go back over and just lightly hit and i used to use that to just try to catch up any little pieces of dust and it'll kind of clean up that kind of white powdery looking residue or even better is just if you've got a tack cloth again i normally use a tack cloth i find that it is the best but this is also a way that you can do that as well now that we've got everything cleaned up we're going to go ahead and we're going to put this last coat on and for us this is the last coat this is the third coat this is about where we're going to want to keep it most likely the beauty of this is so in this case with this particular poly it's a clear gloss but you can kind of get there as fast or slow as you want to so it can look fairly matte at the beginning or as you build those coats up it'll begin to look a lot more glossy so after a couple more hours go back over it one last time hit it with some 320 and then again go back over it with a tack cloth or a slightly damp paper towel once you've done that the thing that i love to do at the very end is just take like a 600 grit sandpaper hit it with some of that and then it's going to take it over the edge it's going to be so buttery smooth it's going to be you're just going to absolutely love it and it's going to blow your mind [Music]

Channel: Debt-Free DIY

Views: 96,738

Keywords: apply polyurethane, apply polyurethane to wood, applying polyurethane, applying polyurethane on wood, diy, furniture refinishng, how to apply polyurethane, how to apply polyurethane on wood, how to apply wipe on poly, how to use wipe on poly, minwax, minwax polyurethane, minwax wipe on poly, perfect finish, polyurethane, wipe on poly, wipe on polyurethane, woodworking

Id: yvl1Foj5564

Length: 6min 49sec (409 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 20 2021