Perfect Table Finish (in a dusty garage)—Wood Table Finishing—How To Stain Wood

this video is brought to you by Squarespace hey this is cam with black tail studio and this week I'm gonna show you how I sand and finish my tables I'll be demonstrating on this epoxy and English walnut table but the same process could be applied to any type of wood table enjoy I chose to demonstrate on this black epoxy and walnut table because black epoxy is about the hardest thing to finish when it comes to eliminating all the really fines sanding scratches so it works on this it should work on your project you can see here I start with a little pencil grid and just push hard enough you don't want to dent the fibers but you want to cover everything so you can see where you've sanded and more importantly where you haven't sanded I'll give a brief disclaimer the audio finish in large part is gonna be in the quality of your tools not so you couldn't use a cheaper sander and cheaper sandpaper you don't need to use a festival there's other good Sanders out there I've heard Mirko makes good ones but I'm using this festival sander it really does give a lot finer sanding patter and doesn't show the scratches nearly as much is like a box store sander that you might get at Home Depot or Lowe's so you don't have to use it but it does make it a lot easier you've probably noticed I'm going a lot faster than you'd normally see me sand and this is to prevent any uneven sanding since the epoxy is so much harder than the wood it's really easy to create a little lip there where the epoxy meets the wood when you're doing these epoxy tables no matter how good of a job you did with the pour you're gonna get some tiny little pits left in there and as the last step the last thing while I'm finishing I'll fill them with a CA glue and an activator and this stuff hardens in just a few seconds you can sand it a lot easier than having to wait another day after filling it with epoxy and these are just filled with a tiny little all and it helps get in the tiny little cracks there you just hit him with the activator and it says 30 seconds but really in about 10 seconds you can stand these flush and just like the epoxy it is harder than the wood so you want to go pretty fast and I'm gonna show you how you eliminate some of the problems that can come with moving the sander so fast the main problem with that is that you get what's called these little pigtails and you can see these little swirls they look just like a little pigtail and that comes from moving too fast if you can keep your sander just free is gonna help you the most with that and I keep my air on hand so I can just blow it off and also wiping down the epoxy with the microfiber in between passes is gonna really eliminate those but do not move on to the next grit until you get all those pigtails out of the way they can be a little frustrating kind of hard sometimes to do but don't step on to the next grit until you get that completely eliminated if you are using the router to round over the edge of your table I like to do it after the hundred grit so that way the table is perfectly flat but you can still come back and sand out any of the little fine scratches left by your router on the surface of the table it's really tempting especially I think for new woodworkers I know I was guilty of this to start skipping grids to say well why can't I go from 100 straight 250 or I can't go from 100 straight to 180 it does make a big difference especially with this black epoxy you're really gonna see those fine scratches in there so don't skip any grits I know it's frustrating but you want to hit them all and it'll really show on your final product I don't have the science behind it but I have a lot of trial and error with it and it does make a big difference and I did want to mention I've tried a lot of different sand papers this klingspor paper is kind of my go-to right now the box store stuff like that Diablo I don't think is the highest quality but festivals okay just doesn't seem to last as long of the klingspor so that's the type of paper that I prefer to go to it's also a little less expensive once you start getting up to this 220 grit when the sanding pattern really starts to get eliminated and it'll start to look really nice and hopefully you've done your job and getting rid of those pigtails because this is where they're gonna become really evident if you didn't get rid of them you can see they're no finish obviously on there but it does look pretty uniform so we're looking good so far our last great we're gonna do is just 320 grit and you see there that actually is festival paper not the klingspor this is where it's gonna really clog up your sandpaper if you don't wipe it off every couple seconds so this is why you really see me wiping it off every couple passes and hopefully keep it all clogged for the other ways you'll get a lot of those little pigtails once you feel like he really got a good I blow it off with the air hose here it's also a good idea if you have some fluorescent lights too we look closely on there cuz that's what you're gonna see the flaws because a lot of those will show up more after the finishes on but I felt very confident that we got all the little swirls out of there so I'm gonna get it ready to finish I had one table that I forgot to finish on there was some greasy handprints in it and I don't know that it was just from regular hands it was with one of my resin workshops so it could have been a student but I think it was just my own greasy hands so that's why I'm using these nitrile gloves here to move it around once it's completely ready to finish the finish I'm gonna use is called Osmo poly excess oil it's a design for hardwood floors I've used a lot of different ones some I've used Odie's different types of Osmo the old Ozma's didn't work too well and this one works really well for the epoxy it's not quite as durable it's like an OD soil it is a hardwood floor finish so it is quite durable but just not quite as much as the Odie's oil that I've used in the past on some projects and if you've used ozma in the past this one was a little different I was a little confused I had a friend of mine James over at lux edge kind of schooled me up on this so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna trial it on then I'm gonna buff it in with this white pad that's a 3m white pad you can also use an orbital sander I've used that quite a bit in the past but this is just a really nice buffer polisher and the difference with the old formula is that you don't wipe this one off when it's done it'll be just a little bit tacky there so you want a buff and buff and buff until you don't see any swirls so there's just nothing left and I'll show you here in a second how I'll flip the pad to get that last little bit off but you want to buff and buff and then just leave it and so you'll see that here in a second a little bit better but using the little piece of the white pad to buff on the end grain and on the sides here too one thing that can be a pretty hard lesson for new woodworkers I know I made this mistake one time is you want a new woodworkers will want to finish one side leave it overnight and then come and turn it but what happens is the wood will absorb some moisture in the air and I'll actually cup and bow on you overnight and so not a fun fix to have to make so you want to finish both sides as soon as you can and that's why I have those towels on the underside and why I finish the underside first and if I didn't mention this is just a bondo trial that I'm using you can use a credit card use that quite a bit or you can just buff it straight on with your buffer or orbital and don't rush this here this is where you can go really slow you're not putting any scratches into the wood or epoxy with this white pad you're just gonna really work this Osmo into the wood nice and slow and here's the key to this Osmo is you flip this pad over to the clean side and then you're just gonna keep buffing until you don't see any swirl marks left so you're just gonna buff and buff and buff with this clean side and then leave it don't touch it don't do anything it'll be tempted to touch it but don't and it'll after it cures overnight it'll be just a perfect finish after you buff it for quite a while and you feel confident it's best just to walk away and you'll see me wipe this side down here it's not really ideal the finish doesn't look any different you just won't get as much protection if you wipe it off so that's how I keep the sides looking completely uniform and you'll see here that the sheen looks a little uneven it doesn't look great but this is how it's supposed to look after it cures overnight it'll look a lot better after you let it dry overnight you want to come back and I've found 600 grit to be a really good grit to sand this with it will clog up that paper even more so than before so you have to really constantly be blowing it down and wiping it down but 600 grit and then you're gonna come back and do the exact same process as you did before where you're gonna just trial it on and buff it till there's nothing left if you're super observant you'll notice this is not the same table this is though made out of the exact same wood from the same tree and the same epoxy it said it was a match set to this table I just wanted to demonstrate on a little bit larger surface but the same process you just trowel it on buff it off and let it dry overnight and when you come back if you look really nice the last thing that you can do to really even it out and it's not entirely necessary is using their liquid wax cleaner and this I just buff it on it'll be kind of a leave it a little bit greasy but just hand buff it on with a microfiber towel wipe it off let it dry for a few minutes and it'll really even know any any unevenness and this is also a good cleaner it'll fill any little micro scratches once you have this in your home and I've been using a little bit so it's a good all-around cleaner to help kind of you ate it too after you get this on there that is the last step and you are completely done you got a professional finish in a garage with no dust marks it really is as easy as I made it look I tried to get all the different angles so you could really see how nice this finishes get a pretty nice Sheen if you want more of a sheen you can keep adding coats overall though this table turned out really well you can see here as I come around it was a slightly transparent epoxy which shows even more scratches but finish ended up really nice no swirls no dust pits no no anything really just a nice even satin Sheen I will say about the highest Sheen you could get is maybe a semi-gloss you're not gonna get it all the way to gloss I don't think you can go more of a matte finish than I did here if you really want to so really kind of a matte to semi-gloss the most but I think it makes best as a satin finish oh here's the bigger table I did I did three coats on this one to bring up a little bit more Sheen but same thing just a really nice even Sheen I really appreciate watching this week's video if I left anything out or if anything wasn't clear be sure to ask me in the comments I'll make sure to get to all of those and thanks again to this week's sponsor Squarespace without sponsors like them it wouldn't be possible to take the time out of these projects to make these videos so thanks to them and thanks so much to you have a great day

Channel: Blacktail Studio

Views: 385,426

Rating: 4.9501896 out of 5

Keywords: wood finish, osmo, odies oil, rubio, polyurethene, shellac, diy woodwork, how to finish a table, dust free finish, rubio monocoat, best wood finish, wipe on poly, wipe on finish, tabletop, how to stain wood, how to restain wood, how to apply wood stain, wood stain, how to varnish a table, how to finish a live edge slab, how to seal a wood table, How to apply polyurethane to wood, sanding epoxy resin between coats, wood finishing

Id: Qv_cOr9Usn4

Length: 10min 21sec (621 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 11 2019