Thoughts on Finishing 2 [ Rattle Can techniques ]

While writing this I realized that most of this applies to any spray equipment and that these are not techniques that I use on valuable antique pieces. When restoring antiques it’s best to restore the old finish using that same finishing techniques originally used, with some later factory pieces these ideas could be used.

This candle stand is a reproduction of a country made stand that I restored for a customer several months ago. I made the copy out of what I had in the shop at the time. The top is white pine, the turned column is aspen and the three legs are cherry. The finish was done totally with aerosol cans and wax using the techniques discussed below. All the spraying was done on one day and it was rubbed out and waxed the next day, it was rubbed and waxed again several weeks later.

candle stand with aerosol can finish

Using aerosol can finishes is not idiot proof, it is a skill, there are things you need to learn and practice to get a good finish. I taught my self to use spray equipment and aerosol cans, I am also always in a hurry, much of what I do is not necessarily correct or conventional. I am always trying to get it done faster without sacrificing the final quality. I rarely spend more than a few hours finishing a piece spread over one day. This is what I do for a living, the more I get done the more I make. I don’t know if anybody else does what I do and I’m not recommending that you do, this is just what I do with new work or where appropriate.

1. Aerosol cans are not adjustable, you can control the film build up by adjusting the distance between the can and the surface to be sprayed and the speed at which you move the can. This is an area that will benefit from practice.

2. #1 above is only partly true you can get different size tips for spray cans the different tips release varying amount of finish. Having spare tips also allows you to use a new tip for each session if necessary.

3. For lacquers and shellac there are 2 types of spray coats that are useful. The first is what I call a spit coat. This is when you hold the can further away from the surface than normal and move it faster than normal. When you do this you get small droplets of finish that hit the surface and almost dry on contact, it leaves an almost but not quite pebbly surface. When using a spit coat with gloss finish you will get a slightly semigloss finish. There are 2 uses for this technique which I will cover below. The second type of coat is what I call a full wet coat, this is when the can is held at the normal distance and moved at the normal speed to get a continuous smooth wet coat of finish on the surface. Too close or too slow and you get runs and sags too far away or too fast you get a spit coat.

4. Runs are not the end of the world, let them dry, carefully scrape them level with a single edge razor blade and one more coat of finish and you are good to go.

5. Back to spit coats, the first use of spit coats is to build a finish on vertical surfaces quickly. By spit coating vertical surfaces you can very quickly build a film without runs or sags, you can apply several spit coats one after another in one session because they are dry almost on contact. Using this technique when spraying a chair I will start spraying the inside of the legs and undercarriage then move to the back, sides and front, by the time I’m done with the front I can go right back to the undercarriage and spray a second coat and so on. Because lacquer and shellac burn in to the previous coats, after you have built the film with spit coats you can level and smooth the surface with one or two full wet coats which will also bring up the gloss. I almost never sand between coats unless I screw up the finish and need to repair it, most screw ups can be repaired with a razor blade and another coat.

The second way I use spit coating is when I want to re-coat an old finish. Many times when you spray a full wet coat of shellac or lacquer on top of an old finish it will cause the old finish to alligator or distort in some way. Because, when spit coating much of the thinner in the finish evaporates before it hits the surface, you are applying a dryer finish and it does not effect the old finish as much if at all. Once the old finish is sealed using spit coats you can spray as normal. This technique needs to be used with great caution or you will be stripping the piece and starting over.

6. Build your film with gloss finish, if you want a semigloss finish, apply one or two coat of semigloss at the end. This I believe yields a deeper richer looking finish than a finish built up totally with semigloss.

7. I use lacquer toners in aerosol cans, there are at least 40 colors available. There are two kind of toners, dye toners and pigment toners. Dye toners are more transparent but they will fade over time. Pigment toners are more opaque and light fast, they don’t fade as much or at all. When spraying toners I will slowly build the colors with spit coats and then seal and level with a full wet coat of finish. I also use a technique similar to dodging and burning in photography. If I want to color a small area of a surface with toner but not the surrounding area, I will make a stencil the shape of the area to be sprayed, by holding the stencil above the surface and moving it while you spray, the edges of the sprayed area will be feathered and blend into the surrounding area. This would be similar to burning in photography. Dodging is also possible.

8. I use a commercial glazes, in aerosol cans, that are compatible with lacquer and shellac and are ready to spray over in less than 30 minutes. You just spray it on, wait until it flashes [ the thinner evaporates enough that it no longer looks shinny on the surface ] then wipe it back to the desired look and finally spray a coat of finish on to seal it in.

9. If you spray shellac or lacquer in high humidity you can have the finish get white patches or turn completely white in severe cases. This is called blushing and is caused by moisture being trapped in the finish as it dries. The solution is to re-liquify the finish and let it dry slower so the moisture escapes. There is a product called blush retarder, in aerosol cans, that does exactly that. I use a lot of it in the summer.

6. As I said earlier I don’t usually sand between coats of finish because shellac and lacquer amalgamate  into one layer of film, each coat burns into the previous coats. To complete the finish and get rid of dust nibs, I rub out the finish with wax and steel wool. Besides smoothing out the finish the wax does several other things, it makes the surface slippery this reduces the chance of scratches, it adds to the water resistance of the finish even if only slightly, it makes the surface feel and look richer, and most importantly, because the wax gets in to the low areas of the piece [ corners, along moldings, carvings] when you buff the waxed surface, the high areas take on a gloss and the low areas remain dull this to me looks better than all glossy. I use a colored wax that matches the wood of the project.

If I want a super smooth high gloss finish on a piece, I will seal, tone, glaze, and seal again  then build a high gloss finish by french polishing.

Here you can see how toners can be used to make pine, aspen and cherry work together.

candle stand

In this close up you can see how the wax kills the gloss in the low areas of the turning.

candle stand turning

Thoughts on finishing and rattle cans

In my finish room right now I have 8 spray guns and 2 air brushes and I haven’t used any of them in at least 3 years and maybe five. I can’t remember the last time I used one. Why you might ask, and this will make some people nuts, because I do most of my finishing with rattle cans. There are exceptions, one big exception is shellac, with shellac I either wipe it on or french polish. I use shellac whenever possible, I use a lot of shellac. I also use all kinds of other products when trying to match a finish for a repair. I always try to repair the original finish rather than refinishing. Much of what I repair is finished with lacquer so I also use a lot of lacquer.

spray guns

Getting back to spraying, I started using spray cans for repair work where I was matching a small repaired area to preexisting finish, but their use has spread into finishing of new pieces. Why do I use spray cans instead of a spray system? When I finish a piece it usually goes something like this. 1. Seal with 1 or 2 coats of thin shellac. 2. Tone with from 2 to 4 different toners. 3. Another seal coat of shellac. 4. A coat of glaze. 5. Finally 1 to 4 coats of finish or French polishing. This means at a minimum of six different coats of spray and a maximum of up to 10 coats of spray. Which means 6 to 10 spray guns to clean. That’s why I have 8 spray guns. When I did this with spray guns I spent as much time cleaning spray equipment as I did finishing. Now if I was spraying kitchen cabinets all day long I would have the appropriate spray equipment set up and clean up once at the end of the day. But for small amounts of multiple products, spray cans save a great deal of time. Like any finishing procedure there is a learning curve but you can get a very good finish out of a spray can.

spray cans

In the past you were limited in what was available in spray cans but that’s not the case today. Today you can get almost any finish in spray cans.

Cab lacquer, acrylic lacquer, pre-catalyzed lacquer, nitrocellulose lacquer, high solids lacquer, shellac, oil finish, dye toners, pigment toners, glazes, vinyls and sealers are just some of the  products available in spray cans. There are also 8 or 10 different changeable spray tips available for spray cans. With spray cans there is no clean up, little waste, long shelf life and for me increased speed which means more income and in the long run less cost to my customers.

Bird carving

During the 1980s for a short time I got into bird carving. Most of the carving was done with a rotary shaft machine and a hot knife. Then the birds were painted with acrylic artist colors. I probably carved between 20 and 30 birds total, many of them were given away as gifts with out being photographed, a few were sold and I have no idea where they went. Today I found a few pictures of 3 of the birds. The pictures are not great. There is no real point to this post other than I am reminiscing.

Canada goose

First is a life size goose carved from Tupelo Gum. It’s the only piece I carved from this wood as I remember it was very hard on tool it seemed to have grit in the wood and was hard to carve with edge tools. The goose was one of the first birds I carved.

Baltimore Oriole

An Oriole in Basswood. Another early bird. The feet are cast metal and the leaves are brown paper.

Owl

This Owl, I believe was the last bird that I carved.

Quick edge repair [ epoxy putty ]

For this type of repair I would normally trim the damaged area, fashion and glue in a wooden plug with hide glue, then inpaint and finish the damaged area. When time or budget constraints are a limiting factor this is a technique I use.

Epoxy putty sticks consist of a resin and hardener in one stick you just cut off a piece and knead it together to blend the two parts, it then cures in less than ten minuets. It is available from several sources and in many hardware stores. It is available in several colors. The manufacturers claim it to be permanent. I have not used it long enough to know how long it lasts. It seems to me that in order to be permanent the coefficient of thermal expansion would have to be the same. So far I have never had it fail.

epoxy putty sticks

Once the putty is kneaded it is pressed into the defect and formed to the correct shape but left proud of the surface. It can be formed with your fingers or tools. I always use a fill that is lighter than the color of the base surface.

puttied edge

Once it sets but before it is totally cured, trim it to match the surface. It can be trimmed with chisels, files, floats or sand paper, even a small plane.

tools used

If you trim it to soon it has a tendency to chip out of the repair, if you wait to long it becomes quit hard.

trimmed and sanded

Next I apply a coat of garnet shellac. It is always easier to match color after a coat of finish is applied to the repair and the surrounding area.

one coat of shellac

I begin to build up the color with dye in shellac. Start light and build up to the right color, it is easier to make it darker than to make it lighter.

dye in shellac

First coat of color.

1st color coat

Here the color is about right but the sheen is off. You can see that I have scratched the grain into the fill with a dry point tool and colored it dark.

color finished

A little bit of toner and a top coat blends it right in.

toner and top coat

Woodworking Personality [Get Woodworking Week]

As part of “Get Woodworking Week” I thought about what I would say to a beginning wood worker. I thought about tools, wood, projects, techniques and other aspects of the craft, but I could not come up with something that wasn’t going to be covered in depth by others. I finally came up with a couple of thing worth repeating here, I think.

Are you a Photo Realist or an Abstract Expressionist? Everybody has a distinct personality you need to match you wood working to you natural personality. If you are the type of person that irons your socks and all you cloths are folded neatly by you, not your partner, you need to learn to work wood that way. You probably don’t need a selection of axes in your tool kit but you may need a micrometer. Likewise if you regularly wear socks that don’t match and don’t care, you will need a totally different tool kit and projects.

You must learn to take advantage of the happy accidents. Years ago when I was in art school my mentor told me you must learn to take advantage of the happy accidents. Happy accidents are what he called mistakes. Everybody makes mistakes. The great craftsmen have learned to either work them in, cover them up or turn them into a feature. He also said an eraser is not for removing mistakes it’s just another tool to draw with.

      

                                 

Nails

Before 1790 all nails were made by hand. They were hammered out iron by a blacksmith. The shafts were square and double tapered. The heads were hammered and showed facets from the hammer blows. Due to the faceted head they are commonly called rose head nails. The history of nails and nail making is one of the tools that can be used to date antique furniture and buildings. After 1790 hand made nails were replaced by machine made cut nails and after 1880 by modern round wire nails.

Below is a rose head nail that was used to repair a tall case clock I restored. I removed this nail and made the repair with hide glue instead of the nail. You can see the hammered facets on the head.

1820 rose head

This is a bag of hand made iron nails I purchased. They are supposed to be unused 18th century made nails, but who knows for sure. They look good. I save these for repairs of period pieces.

18th century rose head nails

These are soft clinch nails made for the repair of steamer trunks. They are a cut nail with a smooth round head. I don’t know what they are made of but they are soft enough to hammer into a simulated rose head nail.

trunk nails

These are the tools I use to make the nails I use when building reproductions of pieces from the 18th century or earlier. The shafts can be hammered cold but if you hammer the heads without heating them they tend to pop off.

tools

This is one of the trunk nails after hammering. The rectangular plate is a used up draw plate that I use as a nail header.

new nail

New Project 8 [ finishing up ]

This is where I left off in the last post, the piece has been burnished and simulated wear added. A small amount of distressing was also added. It is now ready to be colored and finished.

ready to finish

Here it is finished.

finished

This piece is made of white pine with cherry legs. Coloring pine presents two problems, grain reversal and blotching. The grain will almost always reverse if you dye or stain raw pine and some other woods. Blotching depends on how much grain runs out of the surface of your lumber. There are a couple of ways to deal with these problems. First is to completely seal the wood and apply the color as a toner so the color sits on top without penetrating the surface. There are dye and pigment toners and they both work. The problem with this approach comes after the piece begin to show some wear, it becomes obvious that the color is sitting on top of the surface. The second approach is to chemically change the color of the actual wood. This can include the use of bleaches, acids, mordants, UV light among others. The idea here is to try and recreate and accelerate the natural aging process. The problem with this approach is the the chemicals can be extremely dangerous to use.

grain reversal from the American Woodworker website

This is a sample board I made using aqua fortis, garnet shellac and black wax.

test board

A close up of a pine board treated with aqua fortis. You can see that the wood is darkened without grain reversal. The darkening is in the surface of the wood. Aqua fortis is made with nitric acid which is very dangerous. Don’t do this without being trained in the use of acids and the proper safety equipment.

chemically aged

The table chemically treated.

chemically treated

Next two coats of garnet shellac, then a coat of van dyke brown glaze.

glaze applied

The glaze was allowed to flash off [ dry until the shine was gone ] then wiped back. One more coat of thin shellac to seal the glaze.

wiped down

The table was then given a coat of black milk paint. The milk paint was allowed to dry but not cure, about an hour, it was then scrubbed off strategically with a maroon nylon pad and water. Then another thin coat of shellac. Finally it was waxed with black wax a couple of times. The black wax does a couple of things, 1 it stays in every scratch, crack, plane track, ding and flaw and makes them show, 2 it takes the shine off of all the low spots and crevices and adds shine to all the high areas.

finished

Here is the original piece from the Mesda. If you clic the link you can read all about it.

Mine is slightly smaller I built it to fit a particular space.

original