Any ideas what finish this is?

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bawdseymatt

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Sorry if the subject has been done to death but I'm relatively new to proper finishing.

It's lousy photo but I came across this last night and I'm wondering if people can give me pointers what the finish might be?
The finish is on plywood, very smooth, fairly hard and pretty water resistant.

Any clues appreciated - pretty clueless on this one.

Thanks
Matt
 

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What is the piece in question?

If its a piece of modern furniture then it is probably a sprayed coating, maybe 2 pack of some type like acid catalysed or PU.

If its a piece of plywood, it could be a clear phenolic film -although the picture looks more like stined ply with a coating
 
It was the top to a bar that was touring with an outdoor show, so not a fine piece of furniture but had been made to look a lot better than it was.

I was thinking stained but have absolutely no idea what the coating was.
Although I'm going to have to look up 'acid catalysed or PU' ??

Thanks
 
bawdseymatt":3fwfxun9 said:
It was the top to a bar...
It's impossible to reliably tell one finish from another from photos, or by naked-eye examination for that matter. Mostly when a finish is correctly identified it's from contextual clues, not the look of the finish itself (oddly it's mostly degraded finishes that you can get a reliable ID on!) so this would be entirely guesswork if you hadn't provided this detail. It's still guesswork, but it limits the number of possibilities :)

Because this is a bar top it could be a pour-on finish, often sold specifically as 'bartop finish'. If it were that though I'd expect it to be a smidge better than "pretty water resistant" since as a rule they're completely waterproof.

Here's a thread on the Fine Woodworking forums that'll give you some details and background on possible finishes here:
http://forums.finewoodworking.com/fine- ... ed-lacquer
 
ED65":1z4w5v2k said:
It's impossible to reliably tell one finish from another...by naked-eye examination.

Eh?

I could inspect a piece and put the finish into a family of finishes at the very least, but I know plenty of finishers and restorers who could, nine times out of ten, absolutely nail it with just one glance from the far side of the room. Good finishers generally earn a lot more than good cabinet makers, and their gift of an unerring eye is just one reason why.

The essential "brightness" of french polish is unmistakeable. The grain enhancing depth of oil finishes are a give away. The "weight" of varnish is pretty obvious. You should be able to spot a sprayed finish easily enough, and further distinguish between at least two or three sub divisions within spraying.

But of all the finishes the easiest to spot, by a country mile, is a two pack "bar top" finish. Barring one or two very unusual alternatives, it's simply the thickest. Nothing else "encapsulates" wood like Rustins Plastic Coating!

Now, it's much, much harder to identify a finish from a photo, but I'd put a modest bet on this being an oil varnish rather than a two pack. The reason I say that is two pack finishes tend to bunch up at opposite ends of the quality spectrum. At one extreme they're often poorly applied on utility jobs, so they're wrinkly, gloopy, cloudy, orange peel-ey, and usually have a few brush hairs thrown in for good measure. The other time you see twin pack finishes is the Cheltenham Festival of Craftsmanship, when they're crystal clear and burnished to absolute perfection. I rarely see much that's in-between.

Looking at the photo it's not wrinkly, but it's implausible that a plywood counter will have had much care or burnishing. So I'd rule out a two pack. Then looking at the enhanced richness of the grain, plus the way the water beads on the surface, I'm going to take a stab at a decently applied oil varnish.
 
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