Historic Finishing Workshop – Part 2

With the foundation laid for good finishing it was time to move on to undulating surfaces, the kind of finishing that gives many woodworkers fits and nightmares.  Fortunately it is no more complicated or straightforward than finishing plain flat surfaces.  It’s all about surface prep, varnish prep, and tool selection.

Switching to the “carver’s model” polissoir the surfaces were burnished in preparation for varnishing.

Then, on to applying the varnish.  The true key to success is the right brush, a fine bristle watercolor “Filbert” with a rounded tip.

The Filbert allows for tremendously good “drape” of the bristles around the surface, not sqeegeing off varnish with the resulting runs like you might get with a square tip brush.

A few applications of the shellac varnish to these surfaces and they were ready to set aside, to be burnished with steel wool and waxed later on.

Next we revisited the luan panels we had started the day before, undertaking a light scraping with disposable razor blades followed by a brief but vigorous rubbing with 0000 steel wool.  I have found scraping to be not only historically accurate (obviously not with modern disposable razor blades, but the concept and practice are still the same) but now to be an integral component in my finishing process.

Then another inning of shellac application, followed at the end of the day by the third and final inning.  By then the surface was beginning to get some sparkle.

One last exercise was to finish a raised panel door.  I do not recall where these came from but they have served me well in this regard for many moons.  Again, a few applications of shellac followed by rubbing out with steel wool and paste wax yielded a luxuriant surface.

The large panels were rubbed out the third morning with steel wool and wax, and buffed with soft cloth.  The result was, as one participant said, “The best looking piece of luan ever!”

By mid-day on Sunday the party started breaking up, but the students left with a new confidence and a sharpened set of skills.  Folks may be reluctant to come to The Barn on White Run because of its remote location, but once here they always love it and go home with more knowledge and skill than they arrived with.  That’s not a bad outcome.