Handrail finishing

[No skills]

Evening folks, hope all is well.

I'm in the process of making a new handrail for our stairs indoors and I'm wondering what finish would be suitable.

The handrail itself is made from a couple of bits of 'hardwood' door frame laminated together, not sure what the timber is exactly but seems prone to tearing out (need to try a freshly sharpened iron) and is medium brown in colour (well that narrows it down :lol: ). After I've routed the profile I'm thinking of sanding up to 220 grit, should I go further or is anything higher than that excessive?

I'm going to stain it a darker colour but dont know what to finish it with after. I've got some acrylic laquer hanging round but dont know if its suitable - I want something pretty hard wearing with a satin finish. Any thoughts??


Cheers all.

 

[bodge]

I did mine on the stairs with Sadolin Extra 12 years ago. Still going strong.

 

[AndyT]

Acrylic lacquer sounds fine to me - I'd try it out on an offcut first. Same answer for the sanding!

If you use a water-based stain, it will raise the grain a bit, and if you sand the surface back to smooth you will get streaks of unstained wood. You can lessen this problem by wiping over the wood with plain warm water, letting it dry, then sanding it. When you then apply the stain, the grain won't be raised so much, if at all.

 

[No skills]

Been thinking about it today, had a look round and found some ronseal wood dye thats near enough the right colour. I need to try thinning the acrylic laquer before I try it out (vague recall of it being difficult to apply) so off to hunt for a thinner. Should this fail I might try some of the diamond hard floor varnish I have here.

I freshly sharpened my #4 today and went at the timber, tear out all over the show. Probably a good reflection on my lack of hand planing skills/sharpening so mystic meg tells me I have a lot of sanding in my future...

Forgot about raising the grain before finish! thank you.

Back to work tommorrow so it will have to wait a while.

Cheers.