Office Touch up

  I had to travel to Boston Saturday to do some touch up work on some Ebony Conference tables we built and finished recently. (surface scratches from the electronics guys using the conference tables as work benches.)

 This was a large commercial job with a lot of Ebony, Walnut and Mozambique veneer.

The finish is Ilva 2K Acrylic Urethane TS0002.

Shop Sign

  I have always made a Finish Department Sign at just about every shop I have worked at over the years and it is time for this one. We had a scrap circular MDF template for a job that was destined for the trash so I salvaged it and decided to turn it into a sign. I primed it white with PA70 urethane primer and marked it off into 8 sections. I started doing different faux paint techniques in each section.

Here are a couple close up shots of the first 2 sections.

I just completed the circular section here and made a back painted plexiglass with the company logo on it which I mounted to the MDF with 1 3/4" aluminum stand offs.

Here is a close up of the plexiglass.

I purchased some 1/8" thick laser cut baltic birch letters because our CNC is too busy right now.

These will hang on the bottom of the circular part and overlap in the middle. The finish is done using a transfer foil that I have been experimenting with. I'll post some final pictures when it is finished and hanging on the wall.

Film Thickness

  How much finish is really on that wood I'm finishing and how do I figure it out?

At our shop we spray 2K urethane sealer and top coat and we use a wet film gauge to measure how much finish we apply so everything is consistent. Here is a video from Gemini Coatings showing how to use one.

How to use a Wet Film Gauge

Once I have that number all I need to know is what the percentage of solids is for the coating I am using. For my TA44 Ilva Sealer the solids ready to use are 44%  For TS series Acrylic Urethane the solids ready to use are 29%

We usually spray 4 wet mils of sealer and topcoat for our standard open pore finish so:

Sealer: 4 wet mils x percent solids 44% = 1.76 dry mils

Top Coat: 4 wet mils x percent solids 29% = 1.16 dry mils

Total dry mils would then be 2.92 or less than the thickness of a sheet of paper.

That is why the prep for finish is SO important!

Faux Finish

  I love when I get the chance to do a faux job. It doesn't come up as often as I like but I do get to use it in my touch up work occasionally when nothing else will work. I majored as an artist in college so most of the techniques for faux painting are second nature to me, I also love to do airbrush art which I also incorporate into my faux work.

Here is a conference table base in Ebony with a Birdseye Maple panel I faux painted a few years ago as a teaching exercise. The how to follows.

Somebody Else's Sap

  So after doing a blog entry on fixing sap wood what should come into the shop but a condiment station for one of our clients that someone else finished poorly and we get to fix. They apparently used poor veneer with a ton of sap and didn't bother to blend it in. The customer didn't like it so they attempted to fix it by smearing some red stain on it in the field. I couldn't just tone in the lighter sap on this one because the sap didn't have the same figure as the rest of the veneer. So to add some grain and cancel out some of the red they added I used a pencil grainer brush with some raw umber artist oil colors. I determined the finish they used was regular lacquer so that made this much easier. There wasn't much finish on the surface so when I first tried my glaze the pigment bit into the surface too much so I had to spray a coat of sealer on the entire thing. Here is a picture of the face side. I have glazed the right hand side and you can see how it came to me on the left.

  After brush glazing the sap I then toned in the rest of the grain to make it match better and sealed it all in. This is where I am now, it just needs to be scuffed, toned overall a little to blend it in even better and then topcoat with 35% 2K urethane.

Adhesion Testing

OK, we've made our sample and are about ready to apply finish to our project. How do we know our finish schedule is good?  Will the finish peel off because we did something wrong? Luckily there is a simple way to find out. Do an adhesion test. If you want to be very precise and have and extra $270 to spend you could pick up the Gardco P-A-T Paint Adhesion Test Kit.  I am much cheaper than that and use a razor blade to score my finish and filament tape burnished to the cuts for the test. Not as accurate I guess but I just want to be sure I have good adhesion.

Here is the Classification Chart from Gardco to show the percentage of adhesion using their tool.

Advanced Wood Coloring: Glazing

  As a professional finisher I tend to receive a lot of problems from the shop that have to be fixed. Glazing is one of the tools that can create miracles when nothing else works. There are some real hazards with glazing that a lot of people don't consider. The biggest thing to make sure of is adhesion between layers. This varies depending on the type of finish you are using. There are basically 3 types of finish:

1.Oxidizing (Varnishes, Urethanes and Oils are examples)You MUST sand between coats to create adhesion.
2. Solvent Release (lacquers and shellacs are examples) The next coat melts into the previous one. This is perfect for glazing.
3. Catalyzed (Conversion Varnishes, 2K Polurethanes and Catalyzed Lacquers are examples) Some of these actually do melt into the previous coat if done within a certain time frame, after curing overnight MUST be sanded for adhesion. (For Conversion Varnishes a vinyl sealer is a good idea for the glaze coats)

Anytime I apply glaze I apply over a coat of finish applied the same day unless it is lacquer or shellac. I never glaze between coats of Varnish or oil based Urethanes I would seal with De-Waxed Shellac and do my glazing between coats of Shellac before applying the Oil based finish.

  There are as many techniques for glazing as there are finishers. Everything from Faux Wood Grain, Marbelizing, Antiquing , Sap Correction or Simple Color Adjustments can be done using a glazing technique.
Glaze is always applied over a finish of some kind. It can be done as an additive (applying glaze to a surface with a tool of some kind) or subtractive process (applying the glaze wet to a surface and then removing some of the glaze with a tool of some kind. I recommend reading "The Art of Faux" by Pierre Finkelstein for the brush techniques involved in faux painting. There are also powder off glazes for catalyzed finishes as well.
Another popular technique is a Ceruse Finish which is having the grain a different color than the stain.

Ceruse Finish

All of these finishes are accomplished with glazes. The bottom 2 pictures have urethane moldings which were faux painted to match the wood. The wagon wheel was for a conference table and the hub was painted red a black glaze applied over the red and sanded through in spots to look old. The beams are all faux painted to match the actual barnwood wall paneling.

The Round Table with Natural Maple Inlay

 This is another table using the same masking technique as I used to paint the inlay black. This time I am protecting the Maple inlay from the stain to keep a stark contrast as opposed to the easy way out which would be to just stain over the inlay. There are 2 bands of maple and 1 band of Wenge, all 1/16" wide for a total of a 3/16" inlay.

 Since the inlay is a hard wood like maple I can burnish the tape right on the raw wood without worrying about tearing the pores. You would never want to do this with softer wood, in that case you would have to seal just the inlay first before masking. The tape or the inlay is never perfectly sized so since I am staining the solid wood first I make sure to tape to the outside line of the inlay first.

Don't be a Sap

This is how to get rid of that pesky sap wood. Sometimes it can look nice but in this case it was asymmetrical.

This is a conference table we did a while back where they wanted to use up some old veneer with sap wood. It was nicely figured veneer but no one wanted to see the sap wood. This client took a chance and got a nice discount. The first step was to mask off the solid wood and spray ngr stain on the sap wood with a cup gun. The fan is set as small as possible and the fluid is cut way back. Then you just color between the lines to even out the color. ( I used Mohawk ultra penetrating dye stain Cherry for this table)

After all of the sap wood is colored I applied my stain to the entire top. This helps to blend in the sap with the rest of the top. This top got a black painted inlay line as well.

This is the seal coat while it is still wet. The stain has been applied and the inlay line painted on. Notice the difference in color on the end solid. This isn't really a different color it is just how the dye stain changes color when viewed at different angles.

Here is a shot of the final finish. This is a 15 degree low sheen top coat of Milesi 2k urethane. The client was very happy, you could still see the wood figure but the sap didn't jump out at you.

High Gloss Conference Table with Painted Inlay Part 3

The next step is to apply the polyester sealer. I use Ilva TG1323 . To spray you apply a full wet coat and allow to dry for 1/2 hour and then spray another coat wet on wet. You continue to do this until the grain is fully filled. Usually 3 to 4 times. You can build up to 20 mils of finish.

High Gloss Conference Table with Painted Inlay Part 2

In part one I got the table ready to mask off the inlay line. I do this using 3M fine line masking tape #218.

I also like to use a plastic burnisher to make sure I don't get any bleed through of the black. Mine is an old one that used to be for transfer lettering. A plastic putty knife or a Konig Applicator would work fine as well. I don't like to use metal as it can score the wood.

Here you can see the fine line tape changes color when burnished so you can be sure it will not bleed. I apply the tape flush with my guide tape so the size will be consistent when complete.

High Gloss Conference Table with Painted Inlay Part 1

 This is the step by step process for a high gloss conference table I did a few years back. As a cost saving measure we did a painted black inlay. This saved the client a lot of money because the table was easier to build. With black you really can't tell the difference from an actual black inlay.

Here is the table before finish. It has already been sanded to 220 grit and inspected with a light to assure there are no surface defects. The first thing I am going to do is layout where my inlay is going to go. My inlay is supposed to be 1/4" so I will apply some 1/4" crepe masking tape on the solid wood. The solid wood was made 1/4" over size to accommodate the inlay line. 

Popping the Grain

I read a lot of posts asking how to "pop the grain" on figured wood. The answers are amazing to me, usually limited to applying a penetrating oil of some kind. That will bring out the softer growth but isn't a good idea with some film finishes as it can potentially cause adhesion issues. There is one much simpler method and it is to simply hand plane or hand scrape the surface. The cut fibers show off figured wood much better than any of the other methods I have tried.

As you can see in the photo the right side of this figured Walnut has been scraped and the left side has been sanded. The results are startling to me in the clarity of the figure.

Another method to use after scraping or planing is to apply two dye colors. A darker color to color the softer growth which is scraped off the hard growth. Then a lighter color is applied to the entire surface which further enhances the figure.