The Best and Easiest Way to Finish Pine - 036

Alright, here lately I've had a lot of compliments and a lot of questions on my pine finishing technique. So thank you for both of those questions and compliments. I'm just going to walk you through what I do on my finish and then I'll actually show you a demonstration. I use this Zinsser Bullseye Amber Shellac. I think it's a two pound cut. And the first thing I do with it is dump it in this gallon bucket, fill this back up with denatured alcohol. I don't have any with me, but the denatured alcohol comes in a canister just like this by the company Crown. You can get these at Walmart, Lowe's, Home Depot, any of your big box stores. But anyway, dump the original shellac into here, into a gallon bucket. Fill it back up with the denatured alcohol just to clean out the can basically. And dump it back in here. So basically I 50-50 cut this. Mix it up in a gallon jug and this is the actual finish that I apply. To prepare the wood, I use my random orbital sander and I sand with 80 grit first to get everything on the same plane basically. All your little joints and what not. And then I come back with some 120 and that's as high as I go with my random orbital sander. After that, I'm ready for the finish. I apply my finish, then I hit it with 220 a couple times, but I'll get more into detail on that. What I have here is some 2x dimensional pine that I've ripped down into about 2 inch widths, stood them on their end, and glued them together. And I tried my best to glue it in a way that the orientation differs and I've got some knots and what not. This would be a good example of blotchiness on pine basically with another technique. This finishing technique I think is the best, the easiest way to finish pine. Your natural colors are here. Pine is naturally yellow, so this orangish-amber is relatively in the same family of colors. Taking a pine like this and going dark to me is a bad idea. I've done it a couple times in the past with good results and I've done it a lot of times in the past with bad results. So this is the no-fail method for finishing pine I think. I've got two sides here obviously. I'm going to brush one side and spray the other side just so you can show the difference of both. They turn out the same. But I'm going to brush one side and spray one side. I'm going to get this set up and show you the whole demonstration of start to finish on this. Alright, I've got my gun set up to spray. I'm using an old Campbell Hossfeld with a .8 tip size. And I've got my PSI turned down to about 10 PSI. Like I said before, I view this more as painting than staining because you're just applying more on the lighter areas and less on the darker areas. If you've sprayed anything before, same spraying technique. It's really simple. Alright, when I've got my air gun going, obviously you've got a little burst of air before you have flow on the material coming out. So I give it a burst of air to help dry it off. I sprayed that out kind of thick. I'm going to go over it again once I get most of this alcohol dried up. I'm going to go over it again trying to focus more on the lighter areas. Then I'm going to hit it again with my air. So just like I did when I brushed, I've got two coats on on the first coat if that makes sense. The reason I do that for the two coats is once this stuff dries, I want to leave a lot of material of the finish on the surface. And that's going to help smooth it all out with the sandpaper. Blotchiness, not blotchiness. I've got some spots where I sprayed too much stain on this side right here. And like I said, I'm going to leave that. And the sandpaper will smoothen most of it up. And then the second layer will kind of burn in. So we should be good to go. Alright, so I've let this sit overnight. Normally it's about a half hour, but I let it sit. I didn't have enough time to finish it. The camera messed up. This is the spray side. This is the brush side. It messed up and didn't record it. So I'm going to show you how I put the second coat on, which is the exact same way I put the first coat on. But anyway, this is cured for, like I said, overnight. Normally I only let this stuff sit for about an hour. It dries really quick. What I have here is just two screws coming through the side on these platforms, or these coals that I clamped down to another sawhorse. So that way I can show you both sides real quick. Big knots is the spray side. Small knots is the brush side. What I do is I've got a little palm sander here. It's a little foam piece that uses the same hook and loop system that my random orbital sander does. Same design saves me from buying another separate set of sanding pads that I can... I can always use my random orbital sander. So what I do after I put this first coat here is I sand the entire thing lightly and then I focus a little bit more on the darker spots. And I think I've actually just got rid of it real quick. I had some drips right here that stayed bubbled up from the finish and you can sand them right even and smooth. And I just got too much on this one. Now this sandpaper will gum this up a little bit. Just knock it out of your knee and it'll come down. Alright, now like I said, once the entire surface is sanded, it's extremely smooth. And you can feel some, if you missed some spots, you got some rough spots obviously that you can hit. But what I like to do here is I like to focus on the darker spots. That'll start to even things a little bit more. And if you run it off the corners and get too deep with your sanding like I did right here and a little bit right here, your next coat will blend that pretty well. Alright, that's sanded pretty good. I'm going to go to the spray side. Remember I didn't do the 220 sanding before this thing. Simply because the 220 is just to smooth everything out. And if you smooth it out incredibly before you sand, it's not really going to absorb it as well. I mean, it'll still absorb. It'll still probably look alright, but I think this method is a little bit better. And focus a little more on the darker spots, which on this side, it's already pretty even. I don't use an air hose to blow it off. This stuff will burn back in pretty well. Now before I apply my clear finish on top of it, I will blow it off. But for the second coat, no need to. It's just going to burn in. Alright, that done. Now I can brush on my second coat. It's the same way. Like I said, the camera messed up. Same way. Flood the surface and do not wipe any up. Most other stains, you want to let it sit, let it absorb, and then wipe up the excess. I do not wipe up any excess with this shellac. Alright, now the entire surface is covered. I'm going to give it a little bit more. And you see how much I've got on here. It's just a matter of using the brush to lightly move it around in place. The alcohol in here is going to dry incredibly quick. And what we're doing is just letting whatever is going to absorb, absorb. And then we're evenly spreading a top coat, basically. It's starting to... I can feel it pulling on my brush a little bit in some areas. It's already starting to tack up. So now I'm just being careful not to leave any dark spots where the stain is puddling. I've got a little bit of excess in some spots, and you can use the tips of your brush... You can use the tip of your brush to smear it around a little bit. It will burn back in pretty well. Now I used to brush all my finishes until about 4 or 5 months ago. Then I started spraying. Spraying is a lot easier. Especially if you have a lot of crevices like a couple of blanket chests I did. Inside, outside, rails and stiles, around corners and whatnot. Spraying, for me, is a lot easier. You can also mess up with spraying and stuff like that because you've got a lot of extra areas to worry about overspraying. I don't know if you can see it pulling my brush, but it's pretty tacky now. I'm just smearing the top coat. I'm all set up with my gun. I want to take a minute to talk about this real quick. You don't have to have any fancy equipment to do spray work. This is a Walmart gun, a little Campbell Hossbell. I got one in a $65 kit with two guns. This is the little small touch-up gun. They have a bigger gun in the kit as well. You don't need anything fancy. I also have a $14 Harbor Freight gun for my clear finish only gun. You don't need anything fancy to get into this. I've got a 5 horse, 20 gallon compressor in the other room. You really don't need anything that big for this. Just got a little regulator at the bottom of it to drop it down to about 10 PSI when air is flowing. You don't have to spend an outrageous amount of money just to get into spraying. Anyway, brush side done. This is the spray side. It's the same process as I did on the first coat. To coat in, I've got a few pieces of a little scratch. I'm going to put it on a little thick right now. This is only the second coat, but I had some trash come in here out of my gun. Hopefully, you're a little more prepared than I am. I'm going to put it on thick. It's going to dry, and we'll sand all that mess out for the final third coat. There's two coats of the brush and two coats of the spray. It's about the same thing. If you like to spray things, you like to brush things, it's your choice. You can get the same finish. I like to spray. It's a lot more even. If your gun doesn't have trash in it like mine, then this can be done really quick, really easy, and very little work. I'm going to let this sit for about an hour. We'll come back and sand it for the third and final coat. Here's the spray side once it's all dry for the second coat. I'm not sure if the camera's going to pick it up or not, but I've got a couple bad spots where my gun shot some crap out. Anyway, 220 again, and these will blend really nice. At this point, after your second coat and after you sand, that is a really smooth, should be a glossy, about a semi-gloss finish just from the shellac alone. You should be getting pretty even color form. I had some darker spots originally, and they still are a little bit dark, but nothing like they were on the first coat. Most of my projects, I can get away with two coats like this. This looks really good for me, and I typically just leave it and go with my clear finish. For the sake of it, I'm just going to go three coats here and three coats here and try and even some of this out some more. Like I said, this is already about a semi-gloss, and it's really smooth. I'm just trying to stay with the light spots to put the majority of it on there, and then go ahead and blend with the rest of the piece. That's it. I'm going to get my gun real quick and spray this now. All right. Third spray coat, same as before. Try and go a little bit quicker with it. That's it. Real quick. Nice, even, all the way across. I'm going to let that dry, and without spraying anything else, I'm just going to, or without sanding, I'm just going to go ahead and start my clear finish. All right. Sorry for the noise in the background. Normally, I put my lacquer on with a respirator on, but in order for me to speak, I can't have the respirator going. I've got a fan in the background exhausting some air, so hopefully this won't be too bad. I'm going to stick with the theme of brushing and finishing, or brushing and spraying these two different sides. What I'm finishing with is, let's see. I normally use a water-based or waterborne lacquer finish. I'm out, and all I have left is my Deft brand gloss brushing lacquer. This is a brushing lacquer, and I'm going to brush one side, obviously, but I'm also going to thin it with acetone and spray the other side. Just because it says brushing lacquer doesn't necessarily mean that you have to brush it. You may disagree, but I'm just talking from my experience here. I've sprayed it a couple times previously and had good results with it. You do have to thin it down a little bit, and I prefer to thin it with acetone. Now, this may take me a couple minutes because this little one-inch brush is the only brush that I have clean right now. All right. I just brushed my entire first coat on here. Like I said, I'm using Deft brushing lacquer. You don't necessarily have to use a lacquer. You can use polyurethane. You can use whatever type of top coat you want, but for this demonstration, I'm using a brushing lacquer that I'm also going to thin and spray. All right. For the spraying lacquer, I'm just using that same Deft brushing lacquer. I've thinned it one part acetone, two parts lacquer. That's just for it to flow out of my gun a little bit better. I've got some surface junk here and there from the dust in the air, I guess. But all of that will come out with some light sanding on some 220. You know, that's going to be a problem with any finish if you've got a dusty shop like I do. All right. So, here's the finished product. It's been sitting for three days after I put my lacquer on it, and I just don't have any more time to put another coat of lacquer on. It's middle of January. Temperatures are up, and it's been raining for two weeks, so humidity has really been kicking my butt. But anyway, the purpose of this demonstration was to show you the amber shellac finishing technique that I use, and you can get good results like that, regardless of whether you brush or spray. And I've came back this morning, and I've actually just wet sanded this with some 220, and that's it. So, one coat of lacquer and some wet sand, and you've got some pretty... Obviously, I'm shining the light, but you've got some pretty glossy results here. And of course, the amber shellac finish looks all right as well. So, I know this video is like 20 minutes long, something like that, maybe longer, but if you've made it this far, congratulations, and thanks for watching. Hopefully, you've learned something. If you've already done this before, if you've got a better technique, hey, I'm all open ears for that, too. So, thanks for watching, and hopefully, I was able to teach somebody something. So, thanks for watching.