Maple finishing some more

[John Keane]

My best estimate as to how to satidfactorily finish a maple dresser is to apply a coat of General Finish Sander Sealer, followed by one of more coats of GF EF water based stain followed by one or more coats of GF Polyacryclic or polyurethane. Finish it off with Moser's #3 polish and deliver it. If someone has a better idea I would love to hear (read) it. I have finished and stripped this dresser twice.

[Jim Becker]

John, are you doing your finishing regimen on scrap first?... ;)

Maple is tough to color. Many folks I know who build with maple use water soluable dyes followed by a barrier coat of de-waxed shellac before any final clear coat. Figured stock may get several applications of dye, sanding off between to get more into the figure to highlight it. Pigment-based stains, no matter if they are water soluable or solvent-based are generally very hard to get even "badly acceptable" results on maple and other close-grained woods.

I have to ask you, why the sanding sealer? Other than lacquer sanding sealers (which merely have more solids) under the same brand lacquer, sanding sealers will actually make your finish weaker since they are generally soft due to the things they put in them to make them "fill" and sand smooth. In the above example, the barrier coat of shellac serves the same effective purpose without the down-sides. (The color of shellac chosen affects the final color...consider it also a toner) Sanding sealers, in a nutshell, are a nice revenue stream for the vendor, but don't do a whole lot for the consumer. The exception, again, is with NC lacquer, where the increased solids give a good base for the thin coats to be sprayed over top and since everything disolves together with lacquer, you don't have the layer problems you have with reaction finishes like varnish. (Poly is the worst since it doesn't even like to stick to itself...) If you need grain filling, do that after you have your finish partially applied using a paste grain filler, such as Behlens...it never should be applied to bare wood.

But I bring you back to my first question with a statement...work it out on scrap first before you commit to your project. And whenever possible, it should be scrap from the same project so you are working with the same wood for your testing. You need to do the complete finishing schedule, too...dyes look different on the wood until they are intermediate and top coated