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April 2007 Online Q & A with Bruce Johnson
You know how to build it... now listen to the chat with the expert who knows how to stain and finish it. In April of 2007, Minwax was proud to host a live online question and answer session with Bruce Johnson. What does Bruce Johnson do between coats of poly? How does he match stain color? How does he avoid streaks while finishing? Here's your chance to find out. Listen to the audio recording or read the transcript below to see what advice Bruce had for do-it-yourself wood finishers.
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Q&A Transcript, April 30th 2007
We are extremely excited to have Bruce Johnson on Minwax.com. Bruce is an expert in wood refinishing, antique restoration, and home improvement. He has introduced millions of do-it-yourselfers, craftspeople, and antique collectors to the world of wood finishing and antique restoration. Bruce motivates people to take the initiative to beautify their surroundings. Through his many books, magazine articles and columns, as well as frequent appearances on national television talk shows, Bruce is recognized as an authority in the do-it-yourself community. Appearing on PBS, HGTV, The Discovery Channel, and currently hosting "DIY Woodworking" and "Build A Log Cabin", on the new DIY cable network, Bruce has brought the illustrious craft of wood finishing to the forefront of the American home. Bruce is also the founder and director of the Arts and Crafts Conference and Antique Show held every February in Asheville, North Carolina.
Bruce has put a halt to all of his wood finishing projects to take your wood finishing related questions.
Question #1: One of my relatives placed a hot cup of tea on our wood dining room table and it left a huge white ring? How do I remove the ring from the table?
Answer: Well it seems like anybody you ask about how to get rid of white rings is going to have their own homemade remedy. I must tell you, some of these remedies sound a little too dangerous for me to use on any family heirloom. I stick with a tried and true method -- but first let's get a little definition here. What that white ring is, is moisture, and its moisture that has been absorbed by the finish. Now obviously the job of the finish is to keep moisture out, so when you do get white rings appearing, even if it's the first one, that's a sign that the finish is wearing out, and it's losing it's ability to repel moisture. Now the heat from this cup of tea softened the finish and allowed the moisture to get into that top layer of finish. In this case, since it is a new white ring, sometimes you're going to be lucky and you can be successful using a hairdryer on the low/warm setting to evaporate that moisture back out. However, if some of our listeners have a piece of furniture that's got a white ring that has been in there for some time, that's locked in the finish, we need a little bit of abrasiveness to remove that. I usually get a pad of 4-0 steel wool, that's the finest steel wool they make. The steel wool by itself is going to leave scratches, so I first pour onto the white ring a finishing product, usually Minwax® Antique Oil or Minwax® Wipe-On Poly, and then use the 4-0 steel wool on top of the oil to lightly abrade the surface. Take a rag, wipe it off, check it, and gradually you'll see that white ring disappearing, then at the same time, take Minwax® Wipe-On Poly or the Minwax® Antique Oil and go over the entire surface of the table, because like I said, that white ring indicates the finish is worn out. It needs another coat of finish to prevent that from happening again.
Great question. Great way to get started. Another question there for me?
Question #2: Yes, from Sam K -- I sometimes get bubbles in my finish. What am I doing wrong?
Answer: Ah, yes, air bubbles in the finish. Well, this is a pretty easy one to solve because there's three sources of the air bubbles, two of which you can do something about. The third one is a little bit more suspicious, but I'll tell you how to take care of it, too. The first one can be in your brush. If you're using a foam brush to put on a finish, you are actually putting air into the finish and you don't want to do that, so eliminate foam brushes from your list of tools for applying a finish. Foam brushes are great for applying a stain, but you need to go to a bristle brush for applying a finish. Number two, your brushing technique. While I am a vigorous brusher, I like to work the finish into the wood, the last thing I do is I hold my bristle brush at a 45 degree angle, and going from one end of the board completely to the other without stopping, I very carefully pull the brush along the finish. That is going to smooth out my brush strokes and break any bubbles that might have occurred from how I was brushing. The third source of the air is the wood itself. Wood is full of air. Those air bubbles are going to come through the finish before the finish has a chance to completely dry. Nothing you can do about that. Let it happen, after that first coat dries, go back and lightly sand it with 220 grit sandpaper, that will break those bubbles. It'll smooth it back out, and the first coat will keep the air bubbles from reoccurring from the wood on your second coat. Therefore, if you take care of those 3 sources, then you aren't going to have any more bubbles in your finish.
Got another question for me?
Question #3: Here's one from Joyce H -- What is the best way to repair a scratch in my dining room table?
Answer: Dining room tables seem to be a topic on everybody's list today. We're going to start with the assumption that we don't want to refinish the table; we just want to make that scratch disappear. The solution is going to depend on how deep it is. If it's just a shallow scratch, something that just removed a little bit of the finish but hasn't removed any wood, then my recommendation would be the Minwax® Wood Finish Stain Markers. These are little miniature felt pens with miniature cans of wood stain inside them and they come in the 8 most popular Minwax® colors. You can generally find a stain marker that's going to match the color of the table. Then using the felt tip on the stain marker you can very carefully fill in the missing color. If you get a little bit on the outside of where you don't want it just take a rag and wipe it off. Now if the scratch has penetrated into the wood, then we need to actually put some substance in there and since we're not going to refinish the table, what I would recommend for that would be the Minwax® Wood Putty. This comes in 10 different colors. You just take the end of your finger, pick the color that's going to match the closest, rub it into the scratch, take a rag and wipe off the excess and that will level it out with the rest of the table.
Hope that takes care of that problem. Let's go for another one.
Question #4: From Adrian P. -- I recently made a coffee table using maple, but I've heard so many horror stories associated with the staining of that wood. I was wondering if you could give me any pointers?
Answer: Oh Boy! Adrian, my very first major woodworking project in a high school shop class was a hard maple bookcase. I labored on it for weeks, it was looking beautiful. At the last minute I decided I wanted it to look like walnut, and I put a dark walnut stain on the top of it, and it wasn't a Minwax® stain - and it literally ruined the appearance of it. The wood turned blotchy, it didn't look at all like walnut - it just looked like - Mississippi mud is what I called it. Maple, whether it's hard maple, soft maple, birds eye maple, it's a great wood, but all maple has one characteristic in common, they absorb stain unevenly, so my first recommendation is, if you're working with maple, if you don't have to stain it, let it go natural. It's a beautiful wood, just put either the Minwax® Wipe-On Poly, a couple coats of that, or the brush on Minwax® Fast-Drying Poly or the Minwax® Polycrylic. It looks great with just a clear finish over it. If you do have to stain it, I would strongly recommend not just one coat of the Minwax® Pre-Stain Wood Conditioner, but I recommend two coats of it. This is going to help even out the absorption of the stain. You put the Minwax® Pre-Stain Wood Conditioner on first, you let it soak in for 5 to 15 minutes, usually 15 minutes, but not more than two hours. Then apply your stain, but with maple, I would not hesitate to go ahead and do that application of the Minwax® Pre-Stain Wood Conditioner twice to help even it out. Then finally, don't make the mistake I did. Don't try to make it look like walnut. If you want a walnut bookcase or a walnut coffee table, buy walnut. So if you are going to stain it, stain it with one of the lighter colors, Minwax® Golden Pecan or the Minwax® Golden Oak, lighter colors that won't tend to show the blotchiness as much.
Good questions, we're on a roll here. Let's go for one more.
Question #5: John D asks -- Do you have any tips on matching old, maybe 100 year old stained wood with new stained wood? Is it just trial and error until you get it color matched?
Answer: Yes, it is just trial and error. One of the things I recommend is if you're doing much matching is to buy several of the smallest sized cans of stains you can find, you don't need to buy quarts of everyone one. One of the great things about the Minwax® Wood Finish oil-based stains is that they have up to 22 different colors now and the wonderful thing is that you can mix them together to create, without limit, a number of different colors. You can create them there in your shop by mixing them together. You start with your color chart. You try to find one that comes as close as possible. You apply it to your wood. You compare it to the old, and you may decide it needs a little bit more red, a little bit more brown, then you apply more stain. You can mix stain together more than one way. One way to do it is to apply one stain, let it dry, and then apply another stain on top of that. The problem with that is, on a tight grain wood, after two or three layers of stain, the wood isn't going to have much room to absorb any more stain. So what I generally prefer to do is to mix my stains together in liquid form. But what you have to remember to do is to keep track of how much of each stain you're putting in, which means you keep out there in your workshop some plastic measuring spoons and measuring cups, so that you can remember if you put 3 tablespoons of Minwax® Red Mahogany together with one tablespoon of Minwax® Provincial. You can write the formula down, so when you hit upon it, you can give it its own name if you want to and you can go back and duplicate that whenever you want. One other tip too for matching colors -- keep in mind that the finish is going to add a little bit of color to it as well, especially an oil-based finish, so to get a true color match, it's not just a matter of looking at it when you've got your stain on there, but you have to let your stain dry, take an aerosol can, mist a little bit of finish over it, and compare that to the piece you're matching it to because that final little bit of finish you're putting on is going to affect the color as well.
Good question there, got some more?
Question #6: From consumer RM -- I have some old furniture that looks Mission to me. How can I tell if it really is of that style and period, or if it's just a modernist knock off?
Answer: Oh yes, how do you tell the reproductions from the authentic thing? When shopping for antiques or even shopping for any sort of furniture, I always tell people, don't just look at it from standing in front of it, turn it upside down, look underneath it, see how it's constructed. Just about anybody with enough practice can go out and create an Arts and Crafts/Mission Oak color. Minwax® has made that even easier now, recognizing the popularity of Arts and Crafts, they have added three more colors, American Chestnut, Mission Oak, and Classic Black to their Polyshades® brand. Getting the look of an Arts and Crafts piece is much easier now than it ever was before. Knowing whether or not the piece you are looking at is an authentic Arts and Crafts piece, well, the secret isn't going to be looking at the color, it's going to be looking at the construction. Turn it upside down. You're looking for tell tale clues, "Phillips" head screws, for instance, would not be found on an authentic piece of Arts and Crafts furniture. "Philips" head screws weren't introduced until the late 1920's and your good Arts and Crafts furniture was made before then. Look for signs of fresh glue, new construction, anything underneath it or on the back of it that's going to make you suspicious is going to be some indication of when that piece was made.
Got another question for me?
Question #7: Robert H. -- Should a sanding sealer always be used prior to staining unfinished Pine?
Answer: Not necessarily. Sanding sealers, it's kind of funny, sanding sealers are almost from of a previous generation. A lot of people today are in a bigger hurry. We don't necessarily go for sanding sealers. Contractors like them. A sanding sealer is a coat of finish, which is specifically designed to dry very quickly and sand very easily. Where you see sanding sealers used the most today are on floors, because a contractor can go in or a do-it-yourselfer can go in, put down a coat of sanding sealer, and it's going to dry quickly and sand more easily than if you had just had gone in and just put on your first coat of Minwax® Fast-Drying Polyurethane or Minwax® Polyurethane for Floors, so when time is of the essence, yes, that's when a sanding sealer comes in handy. However, if you don't want to use a sanding sealer it's perfectly acceptable not to. You would apply your first coat of finish directly to the wood, but instead of drying in maybe just a matter of a few hours, typically you're going to let it dry over night, and come back the next day sand it lightly and put on your second coat of finish. So it's all a matter of time, versus investment in the can of sanding sealer.
Got another question?
Question #8: Steve Z. -- What is the best finish for wooden windows in Wisconsin, where moisture gets on the windows?
Answer: Whether it's Wisconsin or Florida, moisture, wind, and sunlight; they all add up to windowsills taking a lot of abuse. We're talking the interior windowsills here now. If you put on standard Minwax® Fast-Drying Polyurethane, the combination of the sunlight coming through the glass, where the temperature is really going to build up there, the UV rays, the occasional moisture that's going to come in from those summer thunderstorms that roll up quickly and blow in before you can get the windows closed, it's going to wear out the polyurethane on the windowsills faster than it's going to on the trim on the rest of the interior of the house. So when it comes to windowsills, I generally switch from the standard Minwax® Fast-Drying Polyurethane to another Minwax® product called Helmsman®. Helmsman® is an interior or exterior spar urethane, which means its got more resistance to UV, it's going to have more resistance to moisture, and it's a great finish to put on the windowsill because there is no difference in appearance between it and the rest of the boards you've done in the regular polyurethane, so Helmsman® is what I would put on the windowsills to help them last longer.
Want to go for another one?
Question #9: Alex Z. -- What is your preferred method for finishing cherry wood? Particularly on a child's table?
Answer: Yes, cherry is one of my favorite woods; I've got cherry cabinets here in my kitchen. It actually falls into the same category as maple in that cherry doesn't absorb a stain very well; unlike maple, cherry's got a beautiful reddish color to it that actually turns more toward brown as it ages. More often than not, people don't stain cherry; they just allow the natural color to come through. My favorite finish for cherry is a hand-rubbed finish, that could include Minwax® Wipe-On Poly, and in this case, since it is going to be used by a son or a daughter or both, I would recommend the Minwax® Wipe-On Poly. You get that hand rubbed effect and the polyurethane that is added by the Minwax® Wipe-On Poly gives it more durability than your other rub on oils, traditionally like your tung oil and your antique oil. Both of them are great oils, but since this is going to receive some extra hard use I would go with the Minwax® Wipe-On Poly, you get the hand rubbed look, but yet you get that same durability and protection you would get in the polyurethanes you would put on your floors or on your other furniture.
Question #10: Kathy M asks -- What is the easiest way to refinish a parquet floor? I'm assuming a floor sander cannot be used because of the alternating grain pattern.
Answer: Oh yes, for those of you who are not familiar with the term "parquet floor" because you don't see them very much, although I did notice in the flooring store the other day that they are being offered again, "parquet floor" just means that the boards are laid in a geometric pattern so you don't have the grain running straight down the room making it very easy to run the sander and zip down a standard floor. Kathy M is absolutely right, you cannot use a power sander for removing the finish from a parquet floor. You literally have to treat it like a piece of furniture. Imagine the room being a large antique tabletop, so what I would recommend would be to strip off the old finish. Now depending on what that old finish is, is going to determine what type of chemical remover you're going to use. If it's an old house and you've got an old shellac or an old varnish finish, it may be that the Formby's® Furniture Refinisher will dissolve that and take it off, and you can do that using Scotchbrite® pads, which are the synthetic pads. They last a little bit longer and are not as messy as steel wool -- dipped in the Formby's® Furniture Refinisher and they actually dissolve and scrub off the old finish, but if it is the more modern polyurethane finish, the furniture refinisher won't cut through that as well as the Formby's® Paint and Poly Remover. So what I would recommend is getting a small can of the Formby's® Furniture Refinisher first, go over to one corner of the room or inside a closet, do a test, see if just by putting it on a rag and rubbing a spot if the finish comes off very easily. If yes, then you can do it using Formby's® Furniture Refinisher. If it doesn't make a dent in it, then you know that you've got polyurethane and you're going to need to go with a paint and poly remover. Nevertheless, you'll take the same steps as if you are refinishing an antique. You'll strip it off. Once you've got it off, the surface might be a little bit rough. You're going to be limited to using a pretty fine sandpaper, a 180 or above, and probably most of our listeners know from experience is that if there's any finish left at all, that fine of a sandpaper is going to plug up very quickly and you're going to ruin a lot of sandpaper. Therefore, this is one of the circumstances where sometimes you're almost better off stripping it twice so that you have very little sanding to do before you come back with your clear coat of finish to lock it all in and make it look beautiful. It's worth the extra effort because parquet floors are considered a sign of quality, both in terms of the amount of workmanship it took to make them originally, and the amount of work you have to put in to refinish them as well.
Question #11: Candace H. -- How can you stencil on a wood floor without the stain bleeding?
Answer: Oh, good question. Stenciling on floors. Well the fist thing you have to do is to realize that you're not actually going to be putting the stain into the wood. This is one of those circumstances where we're going to break the rules. You know you have to learn the rules first before you know when you can break them. In a case like this if you're going to stencil a floor, you want to put your first coat of your Minwax® Polyurethane for Floors on the wood, on your bare wood, so you've actually sealed the wood. Then I prefer to use Minwax® Gel Stain, a gel stain is an oil based stain that's heavier bodied than the typical Minwax® Wood Finish penetrating stain, which has a tendency to run a little bit more simply because it's designed to penetrate into the wood. In this case we want to hold that color, hold that stain on top of that first coat of finish. I prefer to use one of the Minwax® Gel Stain colors for that. I let the first coat dry, mask off the section if your doing a straight line all the way around the room or doing a geometric pattern, lay it out with masking tape, and make sure your masking tape is pressed very well against that first coat of finish. Then what you're not going to use, here again, we're going to break another rule, you're not going to use a brush. When you use a brush to apply a stain next to masking tap, the bristles of the brush are doing exactly what you don't want them to do, they're trying to force the stain underneath the masking tape. You don't want that. So instead, get a sea sponge. Those are those big, heavy open-pored sponges, better than just a household sponge. You get a sea sponge, you're going to dip that, or just put a little bit of the sea sponge into the stain, then dab off most of the stain onto a paper towel before you start dabbing it onto the area that you want to stencil. You're putting on your stain in a thin coat because if you get too much stain then it's going to give it time to run underneath your masking tape. So take your sea sponge, dab on thin coats, and let it dry, then come back and dab on a little bit more. The nice thing about this is, you can determine how dark it's going to be by how many layers of stain you're putting on. In addition, keep in mind you still want to see the grain of the wood coming through. The idea of stenciling is generally to give the appearance of having two different species of wood in the same floor. So if you've got an oak floor and you want to make it look like you had a border in Walnut, then you'd use a darker stain than your oak floor, a darker Minwax® Gel Stain, to dab on in between your two strips of masking tape to give that impression. Once your stain is dried, peel off your masking tape, and then you're going to sandwich that in with another coat of your Minwax® Polyurethane for Floors, so when you're all done, you're going to have one layer on the floor, the layer of stain, and then another layer of finish, so your stencil is in a sandwich of two layers of Minwax® Polyurethane for Floors.
Make sense?
Question #12: Eugene W asks -- Do you have any preferences on water-based clear finishes versus the traditional wood oil or oil-based polyurethane?
Answer: No, because I think that a mistake that people can oftentimes make is to sort of classify themselves as "Hey I'm just an oil-based user" or "I'm only going to use water-based from here on out". It's not a matter of choosing one or the other and using only that one because that limits you. You should pick whether you're going to use oil-based or water-based based on other criteria than just whether you think you're an oil-based person or a water-based person. For instance, if you're working inside, say it's wintertime someplace and you've got to working inside, you can't ventilate very well, then your water-based has the advantage that you don't have to ventilate when you're using colors from the water-based finish. When you're working on large surfaces though, and you need a good long working time, I prefer the oil-based finishes because the stains don't set up as quickly, in the oil-based version you get about 15 minutes of working time with the oil-based stains before you have to wipe them off compared to one to 3 minutes with the water-based stains. So in addition to whether or not you can ventilate, the size of your project is going to have some determination on which one you choose. Clean up, I don't think that should be very high criteria, most of us are going to have some mineral spirits around for the oil-base, and soap and water obviously for the water-based. Color becomes a factor, if you're wanting to use one of the new Minwax® Water-Based Wood Stain colors, Sangria, boy, there are a lot of them, or Safari, Lemon Grass, Parchment, then you're going to go with water, and if you're using a water-based color I would go with a water-based finish, Minwax® Polycrylic, over the top of it. So let your projects and your circumstances help you determine whether or not you're going to use water-based or oil-based and don't limit yourself to using one or the other on every one of your projects.
Question #13: From Vickie S -- Under linoleum tiles I found a hardwood floor, unfortunately the linoleum was stuck down with glue and now there is quite a bit of old paper from the backing stuck to the wood. I have lifted up all the old tiles. What's my next step?
Answer: Oh boy, let me tell you what your next step is not going to be. It wasn't too long ago I read in the paper of two guys who were removing the glue, that nasty glue from the back of linoleum using gasoline, and you can predict what the results were. So, you've got to be very careful about what you're using as a solvent to remove that old glue, and you do want to use a solvent of some sort here, I usually start with mineral spirits, trying that first. Sometimes lacquer thinner will work. It just depends, and there is no way of predicting which solvent is going to work, because every company that made a different adhesive is going have a different solvent for it, there's no way you're going to know what that solvent is without experimenting. But I do think it's one of those cases where you want to use a solvent and be sure you read the precautions on the can. Most solvents are going to require good ventilation where you can have the doors and the windows open, set up a fan, have a steady stream of air blowing through there. Wear a respirator, wear gloves, take safety precautions here because the solvents used to dissolve those old glues, they can be toxic. They can work very effectively but you've got to take the necessary precautions to make sure that they don't cause any problems for you. The other alternative of course would be sanding them off, but as I mentioned before, sanding paper is going to gum up with that old residue, that old paper, that old glue, so quickly that you're going to spend a lot of money on sanding belts before you see any progress at all. So I think the answer is going to be experiment with some different solvents, find the one that works, but do make sure you are reading and following all the safety precautions on whatever can of solvent you end up using.
Question #14: From Chris C. -- What is the best way to recoat a Cork floor?
Answer: Ah, well cork is in one sense you could say, is wood. It has the same properties, it is porous, very porous in fact, and cork is sort of making a comeback now along with Bamboo. I saw at a home show not too long ago that Bamboo flooring is now being touted as one of the newer materials being used for flooring. The properties of cork that make it desirable for a floor are the fact that it has a little bit of sponginess to it. The cork itself though, as you know from just messing with cork, whether its on wine or on something else, it's not very durable, so it tends to wear down quickly. One place I wouldn't use it would be in an office with a chair with rollers on it, where you're rolling back and forth, because it will very quickly wear down. But getting back to the question here, you can use polyurethane, an oil-based polyurethane, with the same sort of approach you would take to putting a finish on an oak or maple floor, I would use the Minwax® Polyurethane for Floors, you might find though that instead of the typical two coats, you might be putting on 3 maybe even 4 coats, depending on how open and how porous the cork is. And the way you can tell when you've got enough finish on there is that when you stand at one end of the room looking towards a source of light at the opposite end of the room, if you see dull, dead spots; that means the Cork, or the wood has absorbed all the finish in that spot and it needs more finish. And this rule of thumb applies to any project you're working on. Look toward the strongest source of light. When you're doing any sort of finish work, you should always be facing the strongest source of light, whether that's through a window, a door a spotlight you've set up, you don't want the light coming over your shoulder, you want the light facing you and that way you're going to see any spots you missed, any runs or any drips. When you get it to the point where you see an even sheen all the way across the floor, then you know that you're done, that last coat of finish was laying on top of the wood rather than being soaked down into it, and at that point you're all done. But with cork that might be 3 maybe even 4 coats, just depending on how much is going to soak in.
Question #15: Gerald S asks -- A housekeeper recently did some ironing on a towel placed over an oak dresser, the finish still looks okay, but I can really feel the grain. How can I repair the texture?
Answer: Yes, obviously it was an old finish on there that was affected by the heat. One of the solutions for a dent in wood is to put a damp cloth over the wood and very carefully put the point of the iron over that damp cloth and swell up the fibers underneath it. In this case, the combination of the heat going through that towel, and probably the texture of the towel got embedded into that surface as well. It's an unfortunate thing, but it certainly is not going to make you have to refinish the piece. It sounds like in this case the finish is still intact, it probably softened for a few minutes, and then once the towel and the iron were removed, it rehardened. So what I would do would be to take some 220 sand paper and very lightly, you don't do this using a power sander, just the tips of your fingertips, very lightly sand not just that area, but you want to lightly sand the finish, notice I said the finish, not the wood, you're not sanding through the finish. The 220 sandpaper is just going to sand that roughness off the top layer of finish. You run your fingertips over, and when it's nice and smooth, then you're going to want to take a cloth, wipe off all the dust, and then put another coat of finish back on there. In the case of an antique, where we've already got some finish on there but we want to build up some more finish, I think I'd go with Minwax® Antique Oil or the Minwax® Tung Oil, they both give you more of an antique effect, and yet will give you good protection. But I'd also invest in an ironing board as well, I think.
Another question?
Question #16: Andrea C. -- Can you explain the difference between a gel stain and a liquid stain and the best options for using each?
Answer: Yes, let's start with their similarities to begin with. Minwax® Wood Finish penetrating stains, 22 colors, as their name implies, tend to penetrate deeper into the wood. The Minwax® Gel Stains, are 8 different colors. They are an oil-based stain, which means they contain mineral spirits and clean up with mineral spirits. In the case of the gel stains they're formulated a little bit differently, there is actually a gelatin appearance to them and when you first open up the lid of the can it's a little bit shocking to see this gelatin jiggling around in there. Stirring is essential with all stains - oil, water, gel, regular, because the pigments tend to settle out, they tend to settle to the bottom while sitting on the shelf. So you stir it up very well, and the gelatin will become a little bit more liquid in form, but it still maintains that gel-like consistency. One reason why Minwax® came up with the gel stain is that if you're working on a vertical surface, lets say you've got to stain paneling in a room or you're staining doors, it's just not practical to take them all down and put them on sawhorses, so if you have to work on a vertical surface, if you were using the standard Minwax® Wood Finish penetrating stain, the thinner of the two, you'd be chasing that stain as it ran ahead of your brush, and if you weren't fast enough you could actually get some slightly darker streaks from the stain that ran down the wood instead of actually penetrating into the wood. If you use the Minwax® Gel Stain, it's going to cling to the wood better, you're not going to have it running down ahead of your brush or ahead of your rag, so your staining is going to be more consistent. Also, if you're ever going to be doing a metal or a fiberglass door, the Minwax® Gel Stain is formulated to adhere to these non-porous surfaces, so whereas the Minwax® Wood Finish stain would wipe right off, the Minwax® Gel Stain would cling to that surface. Generally it comes down to if it's a vertical surface, or if it's a surface that doesn't have any pours to it, those would be times when you would probably want to use the Minwax® Gel Stains, but I will also tell you that I sometimes use Minwax® Gel Stains just in place of the Minwax® Wood Finish stains regardless of whether the project is horizontal or vertical if it gives me the color I'm looking for. So you aren't limited, you can use the Minwax® Gel Stain in several different applications but like I said, it's especially designed for vertical application.
Question #17: From Edward H. -- What is the best approach for older furniture that does not need to be fully refinished, but more, just needs the finish refreshed to remove gunk, dirt, and to minimize the scratches, etc, while retaining the original character of the original finish?
Answer: Oh this is a great question. One of my first forays into turning a hobby into a business was running an antique restoration shop, and we saw many, many pieces that were stripped unnecessarily, fortunately now we're getting more sensitive to the idea that the original finish on a piece of furniture is just as important to its beauty and its value as having all the original hardware and other components, so we do want to try to save an old finish whenever possible. The first thing you want to do is make sure, it's like that old physicians adage, first do no harm. You don't want to use a harsh cleaner. Don't suddenly just grab ammonia, or any sort of cleaner, TSP, even mineral spirits, I would not use any of those because those old finishes can be rather fragile, and you might find that instead of cleaning it you're actually stripping it. That's going to make a bigger job for you, and that piece is worth less when you're done with it than if you'd left that old finish in tact. So the first thing I would do would be to just give it a very careful cleaning, and make sure you're using a product like Minwax® Wood Cleaner, it comes in a convenient trigger spray. Use a wood cleaner that is specifically designed for wood, not something that you would typically use to clean your floors, like ammonia, I think that's probably the number one biggest mistake people use, is using either TSP or ammonia, TSP being trisodium phosphate, or ammonia they can actually strip off an old shellac finish. So to clean it, just use the Minwax® Wood Cleaner and a soft rag, clean off the gunk, and work on small sections at a time. This is not something you do when you're in a big hurry. Once you get it clean then you're looking at the original finish, whether it's shellac or an early form of lacquer, it needs some protection. If the piece has a lot of scratches on it, you can go back and use the Minwax® Wood Finish Stain Markers we talked about earlier and touch up your scratches with the stain markers. If you like the look of the scratches, if you consider that part of the character of the piece, then don't worry about them because you're still going to put one more coat of finish on there, and you can go in one of two directions depending on your personal preference. One of the acceptable ways of preserving an antique finish is paste wax, and Minwax® makes a very good high-quality paste wax that you can apply with a rag, you rub it on the wood, you let it dry but not completely harden, and then you buff it off, and the amount of buffing you do will determine how much of a sheen you're going to have on there, whether it's going to be a satin, semi-gloss or a high gloss. So it's depending on how much elbow grease you're putting on there. That thin coat of paste wax will seal the wood, it will seal that original finish, and it won't change the appearance of it dramatically. The other option you have is one I mentioned earlier, if you like rubbing on oils rather than rubbing out paste wax you can go with the Minwax® Tung Oil or the Minwax® Antique Oil. Any of those would be acceptable and preferable to sanding it, refinishing it, or even putting a coat of Minwax® Fast-Drying Polyurethane on it. I would not do it. In a case like this, it's going to be wax, tung oil, or antique oil, after that careful cleaning.
Question #18: From Ted D. -- What is your take on the differences between a wipe-on versus a brush-on polyurethane?
Answer: Well, it's like having two brothers in the same family. They're both going to give you good protection but the application is completely different. Let's start with the more traditional brush on. Typically with a brush on Minwax® Fast-Drying Polyurethane, most of your projects whether it be furniture, unfinished furniture, cabinets, you're going to be applying generally two coats of finish because you are laying on a thicker coat than you would if you were just rubbing it on. Each coat, I like to give it overnight to dry, one of the worst mistakes you can make with finishing is to put a second coat on before the first coat has totally dried. Because if you do, the finish depends on air, there is some evaporation that goes on here, and if you put a second coat on top of a first coat that is not completely dry, you're shutting off the air and that first coat won't ever completely harden. So you always want to make sure that your first coat is completely dry before you put a second coat on there, so generally I like giving things overnight to dry. So with the brush on method it's going to take you a little bit longer. It's going to take you two days versus with the Minwax® Wipe-On Poly; you're putting it on with a rag, you're putting on a thinner coat, but you can generally go back in about two to three hours for your second coat, two to three more hours for your third coat, so with your Minwax® Wipe-On Poly to get your ultimate protection I generally use 4 or 5 coats, but I can do those all in one day. Whereas with your brush on, it's going to take two days, but you're only putting on two coats. So it really comes down to a matter of personal preference, because when you're all done, you're still going to have good polyurethane protection. The oil is going to give you more of a hand rubbed look, the brush on is going to be as the name implies, it's going to be brushed on, it's going to be a slightly heavier coating, it's going to build more on top of the surface. When it comes down to durability, the two coats of brush on are going to be little bit stronger, a little bit more durable than the Minwax® Wipe-On Poly. So if it's something that's going to receive a lot of use, a lot of abuse, I'll go for the brush on polyurethane. If it's something I want to give more of a hand rubbed look, and it's not going to take a lot of abuse, then I'm going to have to reach for the Minwax® Wipe-On Poly.
Question #19: Scotty S. -- While finishing cabinets with water-based stains and poly, I got some on my arm without realizing it. What is the best way to remove it once it dries?
Answer: I had a situation about an hour ago; I had the glove on one hand but I didn't have the glove on the other hand and sure enough that's where all the stain ended up. I just came in and gave it a good scrubbing with soap and water. It takes a few extra seconds, it doesn't just instantly rub right off with warm water and soap. Squirt a little liquid hand soap and it will soften up the stain and just come right off the skin. I do tell people that even though we think about water-based as no fumes, easy clean up, it's still a good idea to wear gloves. These stains are designed to be absorbed, and the stain doesn't know the difference in trying to absorb into your skin versus trying to absorb into your project, so it's always a good idea to wear gloves but it's not a major concern. It's going to wash off pretty easily.
Question #20: Joe T. -- Can you create specialty stain wood filler that will match an odd color material?
Answer: Well a lot of people have tried different methods of wood filler, everything from the homemade remedy of mixing sawdust with glue and packing it in the hole. That technique works fine for filling, but the glue keeps the sawdust from absorbing any stain. So the old sawdust and glue formula I rarely use. The only time I use sawdust and glue is if I know I am going to be drilling out the hole and putting a screw back in it and I'm not trying to match stain to it. Getting a wood filler that will accept the stain either wet or dry has always been a challenge, you want a material that is going to dry extremely hard, yet at the same time after it's dry, you want it to accept the stain. I found that the Minwax® Stainable Wood Filler comes the closest or gives me the best opportunity to match it up. Generally what I would do, would be to use the Minwax® Stainable Wood Filler which when it dries, it is the color of natural wood, it has a yellowish tone to it. The nice thing about it is that it will accept a stain more readily than any of the other synthetic fillers I've ever worked with. That being said it doesn't mean that you don't have to do some experimentation. One of the things I always keep in my shop are those inexpensive artist brushes because it may be that you've got a hole there. A hole the size of a screw, that you've filled it with the Minwax® Stainable Wood Filler, you let it dry, you sanded it as you sanded the entire piece, then you applied your stain, that stainable wood filler, while it accepted the stain, may not have accepted it identical to the pores of the wood immediately surrounding it. So you take your artist brush and maybe in this case you need to add a little bit more stain, maybe it needs to sit on the synthetic filler for five or six minutes to soak in deep enough to give you the same color stain as the wood next to it. So even though it accepts the stain, you're still going to want to do a little bit of experimenting but you're going to be using an inexpensive artist brush with a little bit of stain, dab it on there, wipe it off with the end of a cotton swab, and then check your color. If it isn't quite right you can always add a little bit more color to it. That's the great thing about the Minwax® oil based stains; they give you the ability to work with them whether you're mixing them together on top of the surface or even before you apply them, but they'll do a lot better than any of the homemade remedies I've ever messed with.
Question #21: Mike M -- What finish do you recommend for Purple Heart?
Answer: Purple Heart has a common characteristic with a lot of more exotic woods and that is that it has a high natural oil content. Teak is another wood that we're probably more familiar with that has a lot of its own natural oils. The thing that I've learned over the years is that the best thing you can add to oil, is more oil. If I've got a wood that has a high oil content, and you'll know it from working with it just by when you're cutting it, when you're sanding it, it will just have a more oily appearance, that the best thing you can do is add more oil to it. So I'll tend to use one of the 3 Minwax® wipe on oils that you have to choose from, the Minwax® Tung Oil, the Minwax® Antique Oil or the Minwax® Wipe-On Poly. There isn't a significant difference in appearance between the three. Minwax® Antique Oil will always give you a more satin affect, so if I'm working with an antique or something and I want to look older, I'll oftentimes use the antique oil. The Minwax® Tung Oil, offers not so much of a satin affect, and the Minwax® Wipe-On Poly gives you the ability to do a high gloss finish if that's what you're looking for, or you can go with a satin look as well with the Minwax® Wipe-On Poly, but I would go with one of the three penetrating oils versus a brush on finish, because one of the concerns with a wood that has a lot of natural oil in it, is perhaps the brush on oil is not going to be compatible with the natural oil in the wood and maybe it just doesn't have enough empty pores to cling to and it might have a tendency to chip or peel off down the road. So when you're working with an oily wood, add more oil to it.
Question #22: Steve Z -- I will be finishing a new dining room table. What is the best finish for a heavily used table that will be exposed to food and water spills?
Answer: I hope the best one is the one I picked because I've got an oak arts and crafts style table upstairs in my dining room and I've got two teenaged boys and it seems like everything from homework to school projects gets done on that table. I've got on there I think two, maybe three coats of Minwax ® Fast-Drying Polyurethane, and I picked out a satin sheen because I wanted it to match some older chairs that I have in the room, but I think ten times out of ten I would go for the brush on version, brushing on either two or three coats. The third coat as I said earlier depends on whether or not absorbs half of the first coat, whether or not the second coat gives you a nice even sheen is going to determines whether or not you put a third coat on. One of the many reasons that I like the Minwax® Fast-Drying Polyurethane is that if 6 months or 6 years later I walk in the room and look at it and realize that all those projects, and all the wiping down two or three times a day, that the finish is starting to look a little drab, a little worn, you can take Minwax® Wipe-On Poly and apply a thin coat over the top of the original brush on poly without having to get out a brush, you just open up the can, pour it on, work it in with a soft rag, let it soak in for a few minutes and then wipe it off. Two hours later it's dry and your table looks like you refinished it but all you did was really just add another coat of polyurethane using a rag, so I would go with Minwax® Fast-Drying Polyurethane and then keep the Minwax® Wipe-On Poly on hand for touch ups as needed.
Question #23: From John W -- How would I handle fish eyes in my finish?
Answer: Ugh, fish eyes, well for those who are unfamiliar with that, a fish eye got its name because it's a crater in the finish about the size of a fish's' eye, it generally occurs for people who are using lacquer. Lacquer is a very sensitive finish more sensitive than your polyurethanes. You don't get fish eyes very often with polyurethane although you can. It's caused by having any sort of a contaminant on the wood that the finish won't stick to. Lacquer can be very sensitive. I remember one time carrying a piece of furniture from my shop into the spray booth and I remember a drip of sweat off the end of my nose dripped onto the wood and I took my sleeve and I thought I wiped it off, but obviously there was some oil in that sweat and when I sprayed the lacquer on there I got this beautiful fish eye right over where that drop of oily sweat landed on the wood. So any time you have a contaminant, it can be wax, it can be silicone from aerosol polishes, any time you have any contaminant on the wood, when the finish brushes over it, it will group around it, it will go around it creating a crater instead of drying over the top of it, and it's called a fish eye. Well, the best way to prevent it is, right before you are putting on your finish, let's say you're going to use an oil base finish, the solvent for oil base is mineral spirits, so the last thing you should do before you put on your polyurethane is if you think there's a possibility of fish eyes is just to take a cloth moistened with mineral spirits, the solvent for oil base, and just wipe the top down. You're just wiping it off. That way if there was any sort of contaminant, thumbs print from carrying it in. Something that fell on it, the mineral spirits would take it off. If you're using lacquer you'd want to do the same thing using lacquer thinner to wipe it down, so that anything that may have fallen on there would be removed. It's generally with people who are spraying lacquer who will run into fish eyes most often and that's more because the lacquer is very unforgiving when it comes to contaminants on the wood. Your polyurethanes are more apt to glide right over them without any problem, but it can happen. What do you do when it does happen? There's nothing you can do until it dries. You let it dry, then you take your 220 sandpaper, and you sand the entire surface lightly, you're not trying to sand it all off. But when you get to that area where the fish eye is, you've got to give it some extra attention and do two things. Sand it lightly but then still take a rag with some mineral spirits on it and clean that area very well, so that if that contaminant was still exposed, it'll be removed, so when you put your second coat on it'll flow right over it and the fish eye will disappear.
Question #24: Bruce, one more question for today, it's from Olga M -- I would like to refinish a Rosewood veneer end table. Should I strip the existing finish and should I apply a sealer before I finish with an antique oil finish?
Answer: Okay, so we've got Rosewood and we've got veneer. By veneer meaning that we've got a sheet of Rosewood that may only be a 16th maybe even a 32nd of an inch thick, so that means that we have to rule out any sort of abrasive sanding, and it also means we rule out any sort of a stripper or remover that may require water as a rinse, because the water can seep underneath the veneer, any veneer, not just rosewood veneer, and soften the glue to the point where the veneer actually starts to loosen at the ends or it can happen right out in the middle, where there might a be a joint between two pieces of veneer, and the water can seep down in there. With any sort of paint and poly remover do not use water as the final rinse. I always would use, Formby's® Paint and Poly Remover or the Formby's® Paint and Poly Remover Wash, which does not contain water. That way you're not introducing water into the equation. So for getting the old finish off, it means no stripper that requires water as a rinse, it means no heavy sanding because you don't want to sand through that very thin sheet of veneer. As far as the final finish goes, after you've got it all stripped carefully, and with no heavy sanding and you've got all the finish off there, a sanding sealer is optional. I probably, if I was using the Minwax® Antique Oil, I would not use the sanding sealer. Instead, once I got the wood completely stripped and lightly sanded so it was all nice and smooth, I would probably start by applying the first of maybe 3 or 4 coats of the Minwax® Antique Oil to give it a great hand rubbed affect. And with the rosewood having a lot of oil content of it's own, it may be that 2 or 3 coats may be all that it needs to saturate all of the pores with the oil. But what I would do is go back every six months or so, anytime it starts to look a little bit dry, a little bit worn, get out your can of Minwax® Antique Oil and spread another coat on there. But let me close by talking about those rags. Any time you're using any rag with any wood finishing product with the exception of the water-based, which obviously because it's water we don't have to worry about spontaneous combustion, any rags that you're using with any wood finishing product, the safest thing you can do with them to prevent spontaneous combustion is to put them in a can that is about half full of water. Put them completely in there. You don't want to throw them into a trash container or put them in a trash bag because spontaneous combustion occurs when the heat generated by the finish drying bursts into flames because it has the paper towels, the rag as material to burn. So the worst thing you can do is to wad them up and throw them away. If you can't get them into water right away, then spread them out to dry in the open where they can dry. The problem with that of course is, if you've got dogs around like I do that somebody may grab one and run off with it, so the bottom line is to put them in water and you won't have any problem.
Well it's been fun. I've really enjoyed this. It really keeps me on my toes and I hope we've been able to cover a lot of the concerns of the people out there. If I can finish with one little piece of advice, don't be afraid to experiment. The wonderful thing about woods, wood stains and finishes is that there are lots of different colors out there, lots of types of finishes. Don't let yourself get into a rut by just buying the same stains or the same finishes every time. Experiment with these different colors and different finishes, different means of application and you'll find that it is far more enjoyable than you ever thought it would be.
