The Products I Use

hey guys this is trina at john's furniture repair thank you first and foremost for all of your likes and subscriptions and watching the videos and all your wonderful beautiful comments that i've been reading and enjoying and i really been kind of overwhelmed with the support so thank you everybody and the other thing is i've got a bunch of questions about products i use so i thought i would do for my next video a uh kind of a product run through through all the stuff that i use here in the shop so you guys can have your questions answered and figure out if these products will work for you on your projects so i'm going to start in the prep area with uh some stuff i use to remove finishes and do repairs and all that kind of stuff and first and foremost i just want to say that none of these companies are uh sponsoring me in any way these are the things that i use because they work and i like them so um they come from experience so they work for me they probably work for you if you can get your hands on them that is so i'm gonna run first through stripper everybody wants to know what kind of stripper i'm using so i use swing professional uh brand of strippers and this one here is their super stripper they have this marked here but it's actually their super stripper which we use to remove like epoxies and post catalyzed finishes this is the the strongest blend that they have i usually use the uh 1987 liquid stripper for most of the projects that you guys see on the videos and that stuff's a little bit runnier i like the liquid because you can wash down a finish and really clean everything up and they do have a gel stripper for if you uh like the thicker more waxy kind of stuff that stays on vertical surfaces a little better they have that as well but i don't really tend to use that one too much and so that's what you can get in the hardware stores if you don't have access because you do have to have a professional account for getting these guys um you can get there's swing makes a residential or whatever you call it brand that they sell in home depot home hardware lowe's called circa 1850 and it's pretty good it's pretty comparable it's not as potent and toxic as this but that's probably because you're using in your home they didn't want to put the full strength methyl chloride in that stuff so it works pretty good still and i don't know much about the other green type of strippers i know that they're mostly a thicker application i know lee valley has a couple of them a citrus strip and stuff like that that you leave on for quite a long time and they work pretty good and you use water to to wash them off so they're a little less not toxic if you're doing stuff in your own home but for us um i need something that works quick and it's toxic but we have ventilation here and uh we uh i've been using this for 20 years and i love this stuff so it does a good job for me so once you've done the stripping you guys have probably seen i wash it down with something afterwards and that is methyl hydrate and over here is where i keep the products that i'm using so the strippers up here this is just a liquid stripper and then down here i have a five gallon pail of the denatured alcohol or ethyl alcohol and basically methyl hydrate you can buy at the hardware store again in this form it's basically the same stuff that you can get on the shelf in in your regular stores and this neutralizes the stripper on the pieces in the wood and kind of washes away any of the wax residue that is left from the strippers because any stripper that you use does have a little bit of wax to keep the product moist on the wood because that's when it works so we rinse that off afterwards then just dry with a cloth and that's good for prep stuff so let me move into glues now the glue that i uh use for a lot of my chair repairs and stuff that need it is the west system epoxy so it's a two-part uh resin and hardener here and they have a couple of different ones i actually buy this at a marine store so it's a marine grade epoxy it's moisture resistant and i find this stuff awesome for repairs that are just kind of beyond a nice fitting break or anything like that that needs a filler or chairs that have really bad joints or just a lot of things i use this probably a little bit too much but anyways uh you can you can probably find it in a boat store or something if you're looking for a good epoxy this stuff is awesome and for other jobs i i have used the titebond wood glue which is fine um i don't think it's it's bad at all but i don't really notice a bunch of difference between that and just a regular um [Music] carpenter's glue cabinet makers glue that i did at lee valley so i have nothing against titebond i think it's a good glue and they have all different kinds of glues that you can use they have a waterproof uh glue that is pretty good if you need to use it in those types of applications worst thing ever though is just the bottle that they put their glue in is terrible and i mean if somebody has an awesome idea out there for a glue bottle that doesn't plug every time you want to get some glue on something i've seen someone use a french's mustard squeezer which kind of sounds like a good idea to me i might use that i'm just gonna eat my mustard first so anyways those are the glues that i usually get into for the most part specialty glues that i'll use when i need to um i this is what i've got left of my old brown glue from lee valley which is pretty much just hide glue um if you can see in there it's kind of like a it's really stinky for one thing um but it's just like a brown kind of a little bit of runny stuff but what i used to be using a lot of it i'll make my own so these are high glue palettes that you mix with water and this is my little warmer just as like a small one i know people have bigger ones than this um and then you mix that all up and you warm it up for a good six hours or so on the hot plate i dropped this one on the floor so i should probably just go buy a new one but it still works so kind of how it was in the shop so you just mix that up once it's hot you mix it up it's really good and i should use this stuff more often than i do in the shop it's better for antique restoration because it is a reversible glue and a lot of you know future repairs would thank me if i use that a little bit more in the epoxy i know a couple of you've made some comments there so i will try to use that more um because i'm just stuck in my old ways with my west system which everybody gets stuck in their waist so that's the glue for the most part now for putties uh for larger repairs um i'll either replace with wood if it's not really needing wood there or i think i can get away with the putty i'll use an epoxy putty a couple companies make them you can get one at lee valley as well but this is a mohawk brand putty and these guys come in so many different shades this is the walnut shade here so you can kind of match it to the project that you're working on they are expensive but they work really well and they'll save you a ton of time on a repair if it's the right thing for that situation in terms of other softer putties um for like little nicks and things that you just can't stand or steam out i use the timbermate um water-based wood putty this stuff works pretty good no complaints i like that it's not in a tube and that doesn't have a screw-on cap because you never get all that gunk stuck in your cap that you can't close anymore so i like that uh the container works pretty good for me too and that's part of the the issue noting the glue so other than that that's kind of uh what we do here in the prep station for supplies um sandpaper i've been kind of um farting around with uh mirka's brand sandpaper it's not bad i don't mind it um nothing bad to say yet about it doesn't last quite as long as i think it should but i'm not super unimpressed with it i've uh traditionally stuck with my norton brands that i buy at a auto body shop and uh norton makes quite a different bunch of grades of sandpaper but i just find their paper weight and how long they last to be pretty excellent and i've been using this stuff with my dad for 20 years too so it's just maybe because i i'm stuck in my ways again but i think it's a pretty good paper it's not cheap one of these sleeves is 200 bucks but it lasts me probably two two and a half to three years i would say so it's kind of like a big investment but it span it out over time it doesn't really cost that much so anyways let's head over to where i keep my stains all right so back here in the finishing area this is kind of where i have all of the stain that i use and there is one brand that i like the most and that would be gaudy and you see me use these in a bunch of different colors it's a solvent-based stain it penetrates the wood but it still has a bit of that colorant that sits on top so i find them very forgiving to use and they really get a good color on your wood even on maple i think that's their fame to claim is that we can color hard maple and actually get a good color in did i not say that right fame claim to fame sorry and that's their claim to fame is that they can actually color hard maple and get a lot of colorant to stay on the maple because it's such a hard wood to penetrate so there's that and then uh i do use old master stains i think they're also pretty nice they're not as penetrating because they're an oil-based stain but they're super good on their color range they've got a lot of different beautiful colors that they come in so these work really well you do need to let this dry a lot longer than the solvent-based stains just because it's an oil-based so it needs to dry completely before you go on with your finishes i've got a couple of minwax products here um i generally think they're crap but i don't want to say that so they're they're okay sometimes you get a good color and minwax is just the right thing so i've got a couple of colors here that just got me to the right point to match something and uh it worked for that and a couple of little varathane stains that i keep around just because you need that little bit of color and they seem to have the right color for that job we get a lot of jobs where we're trying to match the top to the base or a repaired area and it really helps to have a whole range of colors when you're doing that another brand that i use in all of my areas in the shop is mohawk so i've got a couple of their stains here i don't use a ton of them um i'm not really versed in the mohawk stains but they seem to work just fine um maybe i should try using more of them that's basically for my colorants um where you know where i get my stains in most of them are solvent-based or oil-based and uh i kind of stick in that range um for a couple other things on the shelf that i keep if i'm doing oil finishes which i don't get into too too often but um i've got you can get these guys at uh home hardware i think too just for like a danish oil if you're just cleaning up a teak piece or something that is already oiled and you want to re-oil something danish oil is usually what i go to for that kind of thing so i won't get too far into oils and stuff like that because i don't use them a time so um when i'm done doing that usually there's a little bit of toning or something didn't stain up quite right and i need to give it a little bit of color for the most part if it's a giant table or a big piece i will mix my own toners and use my um finisher's touch-up guns so it's basically a bit of the stain with some lacquer and really thinned out with lacquer thinner and then i can really pinpoint areas that need a little bit of color and touching up especially on a large piece i'm not going to use a spray bomb i'm going to actually mix the whole toner for the piece and i find that using these dye spray stains works really well for a concentrated color in in spraying too so sometimes i'll get into that and that's a landmark product there for spray stain but i usually just mix my own with the solvent-based uh gaudy stains and some lacquer but if i just need a little spritz of some color and just kind of a little bit of a color shift not too major or dramatic i'll use my mohawk toners so these guys um come in so many colors it's not even funny this isn't even like a quarter of what they have available for tones but these are the ones that i've kind of kept on hand that work for me and what i'm doing in the shop and they they have a good range of traditional colors so when you're a restorer you really need to match those old tones of wood they've got a really great array of stuff like that so one that i'm using all the time is the medium brown walnuts the extra dark walnuts and the light walnut those three seem to happen all the time in in jobs that i'm really hitting all the time one that i've really enjoyed lately is the fiddle tone cherry which you guys probably saw on uh the video with the secretary that we just did that one kind of saved my butt there another two that are big players are the raw umber and the burnt umber they're very traditional colors that i often use and they come in handy so they also have for uh touching up and on-site work that we do sometimes they have they've got some lockers some pre-catalyzed lockers and cans and you can get different sheens so this perfect blend stuff i'm really really enjoying because if you've got any wax or anything on site on a piece you really can't clean that off this stuff will flow right over that piece so it's really nice when you're doing a touch-up on-site and you don't have to worry about fish eyes or anything like that their sealer is pretty good um just for in-cam blend it's not bad really great on touch-ups as well if you're trying to build the finish after touching up like a scratch or something like that so that works pretty good um i do keep a little bit of the commercial stuff on hand just in case i run into a finish that has them already this stuff is actually pretty great i don't mind verithane's uh satin varnish i actually use it on-site finishing quite a bit and i'll get it in the can here i think i've been using this stuff for years i really like it it flows nicely and uh the brush work is really easy with the stuff and you get a really beautiful low luster satin glow and it's got a nice little amber tone to it so if i'm doing like a stair job or interior trim or fireplace mantel or something in someone's home where i can't spray this is kind of my go-to on that one so let's go oh other than that for finishes i think uh or for coloring that's pretty much what we get to do the blush retarder or whatever it is oh yeah so we live in windsor essex uh and it gets super humid here like we had like 95 humidity for weeks on end and a lot of times you'll have issues with blush if you're trying to finish i just don't but sometimes if i have to um i get into finishing when it's too too humid and you'll get this white haze over a piece now that's not going to be your problems at home your problem will be if you leave a pizza on a table and you get a white mark or a coffee cup and you get a white mark it's actually moisture that's trapped underneath your finish so it heated up moisture got in and then it dried and now you have a milky finish over top this stuff will it's a very strong solvent set soften up the finish again and allow the moisture to escape while it re-dries so it's called super blusher eraser and it works in most situations like that not everyone but um it'll soften up the finish and allow that moisture to escape and then when it dries it should dry clear i saved my butt quite a few times this one and we you know can do a lot of on-site repairs for those little rings that you get on tables or pizza box uh areas on tables so this stuff is pretty cool i keep it to keep it around [Music] and i think that's good for my bombs i mean i'm probably missing something but that's the general so other little coloring things that i do here are my professional markers crayons and hard lacquer colored sticks so these are all for touch up work these are expensive jiffy markers basically with a solvent and acetone based colorant so it's uh really stay fast so you put it on a piece of furniture because they come in translucents they come in opaques just depends what kind this is a glaze marker so it's pretty translucent um i've got the other type is a pro mark so that's going to be a little bit more of a hard color but still translucent so you're always seeing the wood so not an opaque marker but something that's kind of got a finish and a color built into it and it allows you to still see through to the grain which is you know when you're touching up furniture you don't want to just put a big old black mark on something because you're going to see that so you want something that's nice and translucent but has a color that can sit over top and dry quickly and that's what these guys do and they can save your butt in a tight situation or just give you a quick repair when you don't need a lot so i keep these guys around i need to get some more but i've got um a couple of these graining pens that you've probably seen me use and i just keep a small array of these guys around basically it's a very fine brush tip pen for drawing in after repair on site or on a little piece and they just have a very nice tip to work and make you know little graining marks on something before you uh touched up so you've got like a big putty blob or epoxy putty and you want to redraw in the grain on something these are awesome for that also for just like a little tip brush mark if you got like a little little pin prick of color somewhere on your table that you just finished you can just touch it get a blob of color so those are really handy and then we got these wax sticks these guys i use if there's just like a little nick or dent on something that i missed in the prep area and they come in colors so i can do that or on site work sometimes they work pretty good sometimes a seam will pop on a table between veneers and the lacquer wants to sink into it and i'll just kind of fill a little bit with this and it's not lifted veneers just something that you can cover with wax then you can you can actually finish over these with your lacquer and they they're pretty semi hard wax so um you know they'll cover that hole and then be able to take a finish over top of it which is pretty cool for a wax product to be able to do and then these guys here um i show you they kind of go with this whole setup that i built myself a little while ago needs a little bit of work but these are my uh burn-ins so they come in opaque colors and translucent colors as well so it's kind of like you know clear finishes dark finishes dark colors and so you pick whatever matches your repair best and you heat up this guy and this is just a little alcohol burner that my dad actually made me out of an old red pepper jelly jar so it kind of makes me happy when i look at it it's a little cute you just put like a nut with a little screw tip and put the the wick through there so i just fill this up with alcohol and then light that on fire and then these guys sit here and these are my knives a couple of burn-in knives that i keep so you'd heat one up while you're doing your repair on the and you you want to be careful how hot you get it so just a small flame here would heat up your knife and once that's hot you take it off switch out for this one while that's heating you've got your stick here you grab a little bit of colorant and you pop it into your repair and then usually that it's cool by then you switch your other knife wipe it off flatten that surface along with that you need to use your little berman balm to protect the finish around the repair so this is how i have this little kit sometimes when i know what color i'm going to be taking to the job site i won't bring everything and i'll just have a few colors here in this little drawer that i popped into the side of this this guy so i mean it's not super functional but it works for me so that's basically all the color and repair and stuff like that that we use there so let's get into finishes actual finishes so 95 of the finishes that i do in the shop are lacquer post catalyzed lacquer and pre-catalyzed lacquer i don't use nitrocellulose lacquer because it's not really that great at standing up against moisture and other things so what i have really been impressed with is the landmark brand lacquer and this is another five gallon pail tipper here that i've got set up i've got my landmark uh pre-catalyzed lacquer here and on the base is just my lacquer thinner so these two i'm always pulling from to fill up a gun and uh when i'm doing high wear finishes like stairs dining tables uh just tops that get a lot of use chair seat tops stuff like that i will mix a post hat lacquer and landmark makes a pretty good one and you just mix i don't know where my acid is right now but you'd mix your heart um your catalyst into this post cat lock and then it would have a life of like 12 to 24 hours but this stuff dries super super hard so really great for table tops that we've got going on here right now and yeah so those are all sprayed in the booth here and let me say thank you for getting on my ass about the mask okay i appreciate all your care i do have a wonderful mask and i just didn't wear in the videos i usually wear a mask did not wear it in all the videos and i'm sorry that's all i can say but this is my mask here's 3m it's really great it was 300 it's an awesome mask it covers my eyes it covers every part that i need putting my face it's really comfortable really easy to put on i'll just pop this guy on here and this whole seal is awesome and you can tighten it up here here and it's just really tight so if i'm like spraying inside a cabinet i don't get any of the blast back these um there's a screen here that i can put a new one on every once in a while if i get a lot of overspray on this piece and just pops off really easy so i should probably change out the screen you just peel off a layer and you put a new one on these are interchangeable pretty do that pretty often so i'm sorry for not wearing a mask on the videos but i really do appreciate you guys caring and i will absolutely be putting this on in fact i wore it for six hours yesterday spraying all these tables and uh i just didn't do that on film so that's right anyways uh other than that oh i'll go and show you my guns here so the lacquer that i mix i've got a couple of guns some are cheap this is my favorite finish gun it needs a good clean everything works hard in here it's dirty and messy but this is a um a pretty old davilbus hvlp spray spray gun and it just gets hooked up to my compressor back there which i keep at about 20 psi and this guy works awesome i can pretty much dial it down perfectly the way i need it to and it just has a really nice uh spray pattern atomizes the material perfectly and just does a really nice finish and you can see some of these pieces and that you've seen before that we've done them with i also have a couple of cheapos these are my like princess auto workers so i mean they're like 50 bucks a piece uh whereas this one's probably around three thousand um so i mean they work not great this one makes me angry often but i just use it for gross paint and this guy used for paint as well and they've lasted for i don't know four or five years now these cups crack eventually and stuff like that but those are the things i use um filter wall probably needs to change out pretty soon um but i know somebody was commenting there about those things being full and a fire hazard they do get brushed down and clean pretty regularly because they fill up almost instantly when i start spraying because we've got a big ass fan that pulls everything out here so um it really does get stuck up full of stuff but i could probably put new ones in pretty soon there and uh what else what else other than that for finishes i do get into shellac sometimes and i mix my own up i usually just get the the different shellac flakes which i think are actually over there and mix them up with some alcohol and do that usually with a brush on application and then uh for for painting because we do get into painting um we use a locker based paint and it's also made by lenoir so it's with a pre-cat lacquer and it's just mixed into colors that anybody wants so my customers will usually just bring me a paint swatch from the home depot or wherever they want to go to get a paint swatch and i can get it mixed into my locker-based paint so it's as durable as my clear coats and it's a really nice finish so that's what i do for paint um this is the shellac that i i use that i can just get in the can if i'm not mixing myself i keep this on hand too and i have tried a few water-based finishes uh mohawk made one that was pretty good i'm still not i mean maybe i'm just not good at it but like i'm still not super convinced that there's enough product surrounding the actual lacquer like the softeners to repair and all these kinds of things that you need to work with the finish but maybe i just haven't done my research and i need to get into that a little bit more but um water-based finishes have come a long way in the professional world and i just haven't really dove into that part of the world yet and a lot of my finishes that i'm repairing are old and solvent-based so kind of have to have that whole world still survive for me but yeah so these these things here are all the toners that i was talking about that i mixed myself so um it's just lacquer and solvent-based stain that i mix and i keep them on hand just for doing little touch-ups with my toning guns so those all have labeled um yeah i think that's pretty much everything in here why did that box behind the mohawk candy your name spelled wrong where on the mohawk can this is my paint store i don't know my name yet even though i bought paint from them for uh eight years still call me trina my name's not trina it's trina i keep telling them whatever um and then what else can i tell you here i do keep a bit of these guys around these are um the dye stains that um mohawk makes they're pretty handy when you need like a really saturated color um so i keep a couple of these on hand for doing a little bit of spray finishing or just uh toning a piece with a little brush or touch-ups because the color really stays where you put it um extra gun cards all the stuff so here's the for the post catalyzed lacquer this is the catalyst that you add to the post cat lock and it's a pretty specific amount french side oh bonjour so that's what i keep around for that [Music] and for polishing people i've only shown you one video where there's a polishing aspect to it but i like the uh mohawk three-stitch three-stage process um so these guys are my like cream polishers and then 3m makes a couple of really awesome swirl mark removers and waxes that i use as well so i keep those on hand when i get a high gloss piano in which is always a nightmare or just something that needs a really nice polish then i can use my rotax you know what that is you're cool okay yeah so it's a mess and it's like uh totally all over the place oh another favorite and those of you who watch thomas johnson this is where i found out about this stuff from because um sometimes you want to do like an extra polish on something and just give it that nice low luster sheen or you just want to clean up a piece you're not refinishing this stuff is awesome i love it try it it's so good and it smells wonderful too and there's also this stuff and if we had smell-o-vision this is my favorite it's a salad bowl surface but i like to put on the inside of drawers and it's actually antibacterial and when you have smells like oranges it smells so good when you have like a little stinky drawer or something and you finish it over you want to just put this in it does dry so it's not going to get your clothes all waxy but it smells so good other than that i think that's pretty much everything for products if i miss something just ask and i will answer you but anyways i hope this was really informative and helpful and i hope that you're able to find these products if you're looking for them and cheers all right yes i'm gonna include that in the footage wait did you have it yep i'm rolling sweet hey guys this is turna at john's furniture repair thank you first and foremost for all of your likes and subscriptions

Channel: John's Furniture Repair

Views: 39,522

Rating: 4.966454 out of 5

Keywords: Trena, john's furniture repair, thomas johnson, antique restoration, workshop, shop, diy, tools, supplies, chemicals, woodworking, woodshop, home depot, project

Id: zVkYxZ1ylnc

Length: 32min 53sec (1973 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 05 2021