Ken ,When I started out I was renting in a city environment and working out
of a basement ,spray equipment was out of the question ,so I learned to
French polish. French polishing is fine for chairs and any thing that the
surface is not subject to any chemicals such as water alcohol etc .

The dining table that I added to the my web site was French polished at the
customers insistence [even though I recommended against it ] it looked
beautiful . The table surface was ruined several years later when her
husband passed away and the table was set up for a wake by her friends and
neighbors .

Over the years I have evolved a procedure ,and a procedure is the trick ,
something you do time and time again and it guarantees a satisfactory result
practically every time .

Initially I used alaline and other water stains because they were the best
unpigmented stains and when French polished they stayed put. however they
are a pain to use because they raise the grain .To avoid this I would "water
" the surface at least three times with a glue size let it dry and resand
before staining the piece, very time consuming. So to reduce the workload I
started using the alcohol and laquer analine stains ,essentially they are
non grain raising . The problem I found with these when French polished they
amalgamated with the polish and became blotchy . when shot with laquer
products they would migrate as the laquer and alcohol were natural solvents
for the stains . I went through a bunch of stains and finally can across
stains by Mohawk [behlen] called "ultra"stains which did not bleed had a
long "open" time and were unpigmented.I have used them ever since . I have
recently used some pigmented MLCampbell stains on some walnut which I found
lightened the walnut, it was by accident and I have yet to understand why
this stain does lighten walnut.

So I now base stain with ultra stains [my favorite being brown mahogany]. In
addition to the basic stain colors the mahoganies and walnuts I also have
green red and black . these allow my to warm the stain [adding red] ,harden
it [add green, kills red], or darken it [add black] I forgot lighten any
stain [add reducer].

So I stain to get the color as I want it then I shoot it with sealer to trap
the color in .after that I shoot again several times rubbing down lightly
between coats,after that two or three at most coats of laquer [all
MLCampbell products] before the final coat goes on I usually cover the
whole thing with a coat of asphaltum ,a rich dark brown stain thinned with
mineral spirits . while still wet as much as possible is wiped off with a
rag so all that is left is in the cracks and crevices and will give life to
the finish and any carved detail, leave this to dry overnight then apply the
final coat of laquer .

I always use gloss laquer ,so the piece will end up looking rather "bright"
so I take a 0000 steel wool pad soaked in water and "woolwax" [behlem
product] and rub the whole thing down to a eggshell finish. To me it looks
pretty good. that's my finishing procedure mjh



"Ken Muldrew" wrote in message
...
(Ken Muldrew) wrote:

"Mike Hide" wrote:

As I said earlier however well a piece is designed or built if the
finish is
crap so is the piece ....mjh

What finish do you use on carved chairs?

Serious question, Mike. Do you spray lacquer on carved pieces? Do you
rub it out? What did you use before you had spray gear?

Ken Muldrew

(remove all letters after y in the alphabet)