Spraying Satin Deft Brushing Lacquer

[Prashun Patel]

I'm finishing a birch console table right now.

It's been dyed with aniline dye.

I'll be spraying Deft Lacquer (thinned). I believe I can go straight to this without a barrier coat of shellac. The thing is, the Deft is satin. I've never sprayed satin. I've read that it's best to put down gloss first, and only use satin for the last couple coats.

But why?

So, can I skip the shellac?

[Casey Gooding]

You can skip the shellac. Using gloss first is an Old Wives Tale. Just spray the satin straight on.

[Scott Holmes]

You did not say how dark you dyed the wood. Several coats of satin finish may show a slight blueish tint to darker woods. Where-as the gloss built up, then the satin will not have the blueish tint. Not all satin finishes will look this way but some will.

[Prashun Patel]

Thanks guys. Scott, thanks for the bluing tip. I will test this out first.

[Howard Acheson]

>>>> I've read that it's best to put down gloss first, and only use satin for the last couple coats.

That is based on the belief that the flattening additive somewhat obscures the clarity of the finish. The more layers you apply, the less the grain will be visible. This is not correct though.

The additive used by most finish manufacturers is a silica (glass) that is optically clear. Compare a well stirred satin finish to a gloss finish and you will not see any difference.

The way the flatters work is that as a finish dries, it shrinks slightly. This pulls the top of the film tighter causing the granular sand-like silica items to make the surface un-smooth. It's the non-smooth surface that refracts and scatters the light rays giving the appearance of a non-gloss surface. The whole effect of the non-gloss is only the surface of the finish. If you apply a second coat, the hills and valleys of the underneath coat are filled in and the drying of the new coat again creates new hills and valley at the surface. If you apply a gloss finish (which has no flatters) it too will fill in the hills and valleys in the prior coat but no new hills and valley will be created. You are left now with a gloss finish even though the underneath coat is a non-gloss.

Think about having scuff sanded a surface as preparation for another coat. The surface will have a non-gloss surface appearence because of the scratches (hills and valleys) that the abrasive material creates. But, what happens when you apply another coat of gloss to your scratched surface? The resulting new surface is gloss because your gloss finish has filled in the scratches just like it does to the hills and valleys resulting from a non-gloss finish.

So, what should be taken away from this overly long dissertation is that it makes no difference what the gloss of the underneath coats were, the final gloss will be dependent on the gloss of the final coat.

[Prashun Patel]

Awesome info. Thanks. I ended up spraying a few coats of shellac first to seal the surface - only because I know well how that behaves out of my gun. Once I started getting a consistent sheen, I switched to the Deft. It seems to be working well. Both products spray very well even in my impatient hands.

[Harvey Pascoe]

I use satin quite frequently and what Howie says has been my experience. Because of the short self life of varnish, I just lay down whatever I have in an open can before it becomes jell-o and never see a bit of difference.

[Nick Sorenson]

Sounds like it's working. There is better than the Deft when it comes to lacquer. But it gets the job done. I found it slow to harden and never very hard even at that. If I were spraying a furniture piece, precat lacquer would be my choice. I think Sherwin Williams has a pretty good selection of precats in their SherWood line. And it's made for spraying. But it sounds like so far so good with the project so good job!