Dear folks, my son and I just finished building a solid cherry with walnut accents desk, we would like to finish the desk in a satin clear, but we also love the warmth and patina that develops with oil based finishes. We are not staining our project, we are applying the finish with brush, or wipe on.

I am going to dive into the General Finishes line of products, I'd like to know if anyone here has any recommendations for our project?

 

Will that be one of their waterborne finishes or an oil based (not knowing what's available to you)?

If you are going to use a water-borne finish, it imparts a very cool color.  It's not very flattering unless you have some stain underneath.    If w-b is what you can get, I suggest putting on a couple of coats of dewaxed shellac as an under-coat, then go with a w-b top coat of choice (assuming you can get it, I have heard you cannot buy denatured alcohol in CA).   Who'd have thought alcohol bootlegging would have degraded to this?!   I have used EnduroVar on my last few projects and it seems to be working fine, but I've always sprayed it.  W-b dries very fast and is a bit tricky to brush, IMO.

 

Edited January 22, 20215 yr by kmealy

How about Armor Seal oil based wipe on?

Sorry, Arm R Seal I meant.

Still gonna darken cherry. Not to worry. It's banned in most Kali zip codes. 

John,

When working with Cherry, I like to have one coat of BLO followed by a coat of shellac (if the top coat is water borne).  The BLO will pop the cherry and walnut.

Danl

Arm R Seal is just a thin urethane varnish, and while I don't care much for urethane finishes...it's very nice. It will take a few more coats than most other ones, but it's nice and can be wiped on if you want to do it that way. It will give you the appearance you want.

Edited January 22, 20215 yr by Fred W. Hargis Jr

34 minutes ago, Gene Howe said:

Still gonna darken cherry. Not to worry. It's banned in most Kali zip codes. 

I can't get it shipped to me?

21 minutes ago, Danl said:

John,

When working with Cherry, I like to have one coat of BLO followed by a coat of shellac (if the top coat is water borne).  The BLO will pop the cherry and walnut.

Danl

Thanks Dan, that is what I would do typically, just as you described, but I really want to try General Finishes for this project, our newest sponsors, I am going to support them and give feedback/review here, on the product I purchase. Thanks Dan!

19 minutes ago, Fred W. Hargis Jr said:

but it's nice and can be wiped on if you want to do it that way. It will give you the appearance you want.

Perfect!

Just checked our local Woodcraft, they sell Arm R Seal oil based, cool!

2 hours ago, John Morris said:

Just checked our local Woodcraft, they sell Arm R Seal oil based, cool!

But it's "under the counter" and you need a password. You'll get it in a plain silver can wrapped in a plain brown paper sack. 

3 hours ago, Danl said:

John,

When working with Cherry, I like to have one coat of BLO followed by a coat of shellac (if the top coat is water borne).  The BLO will pop the cherry and walnut.

Danl

Yes, I have used this too.  Got 8 years of patina in 2 weeks (sat outside during sunny weather for the first week).

 

Arm-r-Seal is a good product.   It's a polyurethane varnish that might be thinned a bit more than some others to make it wiping viscosity.

 

As to cherry I learned this from the old Wood magazine finishing guru. BLO and garnet shellac. It actually seems to make the cherry hold the color and reduce darkening. Oh and it evens out the color in cherry since it tends to have an uneven color due to sapwood and other reasons.

All these years and I have never worked with cherry.  

You are truly missing something, it's one of my favorite domestic woods.

28 minutes ago, Fred W. Hargis Jr said:

You are truly missing something, it's one of my favorite domestic woods.

I’m with you, Fred.  There’s about 400 bf of it in my garage.  Just use sharp tools because it will burn.