Finish for maple?

[Chris152]

I have sanded some white maple to 320 grit and think it feels and looks beautiful - it shines and shimmers - and am wondering what to use as a finish that will maintain this look. It's for a table top, so needs to resist spills etc. Two questions if I may:

1. Is 320 actually fine enough to go ahead and apply finish?
2. I thought to use Polyvine Wax finish, but can't decide whether satin or dead flat would work better. Would the dead flat lose the shimmer of the wood? Would satin preserve it better? (It's this stuff http://www.axminster.co.uk/polyvine-wax ... h-ax715653) Or does any finish completely alter the way light plays on the bare wood?

Thanks for any thoughts,

Chris

 

[AndyT]

That Polyvine stuff is pretty good.
I've only used it twice so far but I like it. I used it on these pine boxes dovetailed-pine-boxes-with-captive-bottoms-t108475.html where I was trying to match a commercial sprayed finish, which it did.

I only sanded to 240 but 320 sounds better for a table top that you will be looking at.
Being water based, it will raise the grain, so I recommend wiping over with warm water before letting the wood dry and doing the final sanding.

 

[sunnybob]

I cant get maple to stay white. Whatever finish I use turns it to a glowing warm amber colour (not a good description, but it just aint white anymore)

 

[custard]

I cant get maple to stay white. Whatever finish I use turns it to a glowing warm amber colour (not a good description, but it just aint white anymore)

If pale is what you're looking for then there are a few ways of getting there...or close to there! The easiest is the Osmo tinted range, here they are on Birch but you'll get almost identical results on Maple,

You can see the product codes written on the test piece.

Another route is a shellac sanding sealer finished with a coat of wax, preferably a hard wax. This used to be very popular twenty or thirty years ago but has fallen out of favour, probably because it's too glossy for modern tastes. It's not the most robust finish but for many pieces it's perfectly adequate.

 

[custard]

Personally I'm not a great fan of Polyvine. Don't get wrong it's not terrible, just it's a bit on the soft side (in fact the matt versions will burnish up to a satin sheen in patches given enough time through normal domestic polishing) and it doesn't perform particularly well on the red wine/fruit juice spillage tests.

 

[ED65]

1. Is 320 actually fine enough to go ahead and apply finish?

Depends on the type of finish and how much of it you intend to apply.

320 is actually quite a bit finer than you need to go for some finishes. Most film-forming finishes, e.g. varnish, there's little point going past 240 and you can often stop in the range of 150-180 without a problem.

With a very very thin finish (wax) or penetrating finish (oils) you do need to sand more finely, and be very meticulous about cross-grain scratches, because the wood's own surface is much more to the fore after finishing is completed.

Would the dead flat lose the shimmer of the wood?

To a degree, yes. You'll still see some chatoyance, but it will be muted.

The matter the finish the more muted the wood will look. If you want wood to look as 'lively' as possible it needs to have at least a satin or semi-gloss finish. Maximum clarity and brilliance needs a fully glossy finish, because there's no microscopic texture to scatter light.

You say a tabletop, but what kind of table? A side table that won't see hot mugs or sweaty drinks glasses in the summer doesn't need the same level of protection as a dining table (regardless of whether it'll commonly be used covered with a tablecloth).

 

[Chris152]

Thanks all for the replies.

I've used the Osmo 3044 Raw Transparent on beech and pine to keep it from changing colour and after 2 or 3 coats, the white particles seem to take the finish from transparent to a slight white tint that worked well in both cases for what I wanted, but in this case I think that white might take away from the subtleties of the grain/ white in the maple?

I really like the idea of a minimal coating - I just tried Fiddes Light wax polish straight on a scrap of beech (I don't have any maple left to try on) and it looks great - just a polish to the surface, no colour that I notice. Is this a good shellac sanding sealer http://www.axminster.co.uk/chestnut-she ... er-ax19766 ? What does the sealer add to the process (why not just put wax straight on the wood)? And is the sealer pretty idiot-proof to apply? (I saw Paul Sellers' video on regular shellac and it looked easy to mess up...)

'You say a tabletop, but what kind of table?' - I guess that's a key question! It would be a side table - though to be honest I'm just making tables to learn how to make tables at the moment, so it may never get used for anything! So in this case, I suppose it wouldn't need to resist wine and that sort of spillage.

Having tried wax on beech, I'm thinking to try that route, with shellac sealer.

 

[ED65]

...I don't have any maple left to try on...

You could use the underside. You do have to be careful to protect the top surface if you've finished work on it by laying on a blanket or a duvet, but the underside is often the ideal testbed for a proposed finish, as long as it has been planed/scraped/sanded to the same level as the top was.

What does the sealer add to the process (why not just put wax straight on the wood)?

It partially seals the wood so that the wax doesn't soak right in. While you can obviously apply wax to bare wood (especially if using certain application processes like rubbing with a polissoir) it's almost universal advice in old finishing guides not to apply wax directly to the bare wood. There's no rule that says you can't, and the wood doesn't object, it just saves a lot of time and elbow grease in building up the finish if waxing in the conventional way.

 

[custard]

Is this a good shellac sanding sealer http://www.axminster.co.uk/chestnut-she ... er-ax19766 ? What does the sealer add to the process (why not just put wax straight on the wood)? And is the sealer pretty idiot-proof to apply?

I've never used that particular sanding sealer (I tend to use the Liberon version, for many years it was sold as a kind of a simple finishing double act with their Black Bison wax) but probably more important than the brand is to get it from a high volume retailer so that it's relatively fresh. Don't get paranoid about the age of shellac sanding, I've used stuff three or four years old that was perfectly okay, but all things being equal you would prefer something relatively fresh to something that's sat gathering dust in a storeroom.

Shellac sanding sealer adds a lot to the process. Not quite so critical on Maple but it acts as a partial grain filler, on something like Ash, Oak, or Elm that makes a massive difference to the finish, both to the immediate look and to the long term ability to keep dust and grime out of the pores. It allows you to sand to a very even and level surface. And it also keeps the wax finish consistent, used on bare wood wax tends to be patchy unless you apply many many coats over a long period of time. If you're lucky enough to have Maple with some fiddleback or ripple figure then you'll really enhance the impact with shellac sanding sealer.

It's dead easy to apply. In the 70's and 80's shellac sanding sealer plus wax was the quick and easy, default finishing solution for plenty of woodworkers, it gives most of a french polish effect for a fraction of the effort. Personally I prefer it with a hard wax rather than a paste wax, but you'd probably have to brew your own hard wax as I don't think hard wax is sold commercially any more, however that's a counsel of perfection and I wouldn't fret about it.

Good luck!

 

[custard]

I've used the Osmo 3044 Raw Transparent on beech and pine to keep it from changing colour and after 2 or 3 coats, the white particles seem to take the finish from transparent to a slight white tint that worked well in both cases for what I wanted, but in this case I think that white might take away from the subtleties of the grain/ white in the maple?

I've tried 3044 on a wide range of timbers and I've never experienced that particular problem. It maybe wouldn't be my first choice for highly figured fiddleback Maple or rippled Sycamore, but that's because it doesn't make the figure pop as much as other alternatives, not because it muddies the grain at all. I'd agree that the other two Osmo "white" finishes in the photo I showed previously, they obscure the grain to a greater or lesser extent, but not 3044.

 

[Chris152]

That's great - thanks for the helpful replies, I'm going to try the shellac sealer/ wax route.

I think maybe I was applying the Osmo too thick, which would account for the whiteness? I did read the instructions and try to apply it thin but that might account for it.

Making decisions about finishing's tricky, isn't it? It feels like all that hard work could go down the drain with a bad decision at this stage, but I guess the more finishes you try the easier it gets...

Thanks again,

C

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Did you wipe it off or leave it as applied?

 

[Chris152]

Did you wipe it off or leave it as applied?

I applied it with a brush and just left it to dry. Three coats.

 

[custard]

Did you wipe it off or leave it as applied?

I applied it with a brush and just left it to dry. Three coats.

Phil's nailed it.

Apply (brush or rag), leave for 10-15 minutes, rag it off and burnish, leave overnight, repeat for a total of two or three coats.

 

[Chris152]

I had no idea! Ok, to rag it off, do you use a cloth damp with white spirit? And how do you burnish it?

edit: some reading tells me that you can use a rag soaked with mineral spirits to remove the excess; and that burnishing is also called wet-on-wet and is a kind of massaging of the oil into the wood's surface. I'll try this with 0000 wire wool.

Thanks both for the Osmo advice - I'm going to use wax on the maple and will give Osmo another go soon.

 

[custard]

I had no idea! Ok, to rag it off, do you use a cloth damp with white spirit? And how do you burnish it?

edit: some reading tells me that you can use a rag soaked with mineral spirits to remove the excess; and that burnishing is also called wet-on-wet and is a kind of massaging of the oil into the wood's surface. I'll try this with 0000 wire wool.

Thanks both for the Osmo advice - I'm going to use wax on the maple and will give Osmo another go soon.

The Osmo instructions call for ragging off with a dry rag, that's what I do and it's always worked fine. The key thing is the timing, leave it too long and it sets hard, rag off too early and you wipe away the Osmo that you've just applied! In my heated workshop 15minutes is about right. After that you should leave it overnight before applying the next coat.

Burnishing is just vigorous rubbing with a rag.

Don't over complicate things, you'll read all sorts of voodoo nonsense when it comes to finishing. Just follow the instructions on the tin, nothing less and nothing more; the manufacturer has a vested commercial interest in the user getting good results, and no one knows their products as well as they do.

Good luck!

 

[Chris152]

Thanks Custard. Weird thing is my tin (.75 L) doesn't say anything about ragging off - just to apply thinly. It does say in a further note that you can remove brush marks with an 'Osmo microfibre roller' after 30 mins. Anyway, whatever it says I now understand the whiteness I was getting (which I was quite happy with the two times I used it, in that it knocked the yellow pine/ grain back) and will definitely try again using the rag off/ burnish method. Finishing can clearly be a can of worms for the beginner - as with the wood I'm using, I just want to fid a few that get the look and feel I want to achieve.

All of which said, my endless dithering means I won't be able to get on with the sanding sealer until the maple has learned to behave itself and stop trying to cup...

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