waterlox, questions remain

[Colin Dingler]

after reading about a dozen posts on here about waterlox, I've learned a lot, but I have some remaining questions.

I am in the middle of a project to finish birch butcher-block counter tops for a DIY kitchen update. I have already applied a number of coats of waterlox original with generally good results, but my technique is evolving and I've run into a few issues. I trust that some of the experienced finishers on this forum will have advice.

Here is what I have done to date:

applied about six coats of WL to two separate pieces of the counter using a foam brush.
after four coats with no sanding between, I was dissatisfied with how rough the surface was and began experimenting with sanding between coats. I used 320 open-grit paper and hand sanded with the grain, vacuuming up dust and using a cloth with MS to thoroughly clean.
at the same time, I tried a technique I read about elsewhere (hadn't discovered this forum yet) that somebody called "dry brushing"--applying a very liberal amount of WL with a foam brush, waiting 20 minutes, and then gently smoothing the waterlox with a new dry brush.
the results of this sanding/dry-brush technique were pretty good: I have a very smooth, glossy surface that looks like a thick layer of clear resin over the wood. however, there are some places where you can see brush strokes in the final coat (perhaps because I literally pooled the waterlox on and pushed it around with the dry brush per this other guy's recommendations). You can also see scratches from my sanding on the previous coat if you look at the right angle. there are also drips on the sides of the counter from the excess that ran down the sides. the dry-brush technique does not seem well-suited for edges given the volume of liquid applied.


overall, the counter surface looks pretty good, but not quite right. also, I was not expecting such a thick, glossy-looking finish. The several accounts that I read beforehand made me think the WL would be a more natural-looking alternative to poly finish. It has now been about two weeks since I applied the last dry-brush coat, and I know that the gloss gradually diminishes as the WL cures over a month, but it honestly looks more plastic-y then many wood counters that I have seen coated in poly.

After getting to this stage, I discovered the threads on this forum in which experienced waterloxers recommend the wipe-on, "cleaning a fast-food table" method. I was curious to see if this method might produce a thinner, more natural (i.e., less cased-in-resin) look, so I took one of the counters and sanded down the surface. I didn't go all the way, however, and I'll admit that I'm a rookie and probably made some mistakes at this stage. I started with 120 grit on the orbital sander, went up to 220, and then went to 320 (all with the orbital sander) to get a very smooth surface. After cleaning off dust, I applied three coats using the wipe-on technique (blue shop towel). That has dried for 24 hours.

So here is where I'm seeking guidance. The results were not stellar:

the surface clearly shows wipe marks in some places--it is much less even than the "dry-brush" approach I used first. Do these wipe marks go away after applying more wipe-on coats, or could it be my technique? i tried not to leave any pooled resin when I wiped on.
I can clearly see squiggle marks from my sanding of the previous coat. Have I used poor sanding technique--using too large a grain of paper or using an orbital sander between coats rather than sanding by hand? Did I need to continue sanding down to a finer grit? I thought to try the orbital because my previous results with hand sanding and 320 grit weren't great, either.

I know I'm throwing a lot of questions out there, so I'll take what advice I can get. I still have one counter that looks *pretty good* that I haven't fussed with, but ideally I'd like to get both of these looking better using the wipe-one technique, which sounded like it was less fussy than heaping on the finish and dry-brushing (which nobody on here appears to recommend). Any hope of resurrecting the counter with the squiggle marks in the previous layer without sanding all the way back to the wood?

thanks in advance for your advice.

[Jim Becker]

You might want to mention which Waterlox product(s) you're interested in. Waterlox is a brand, not a product and they have several different finishes which are, um...different. :)

[Prashun Patel]

Post a picture of what you have.

I suspect that you have a thick enough film now. If you wait a few weeks, the surface will cure and you may improve the look by 'rubbing out' the surface. This involves a gentle sanding with with high grits of sandpaper to level all your brush marks, and then polishing it up to an acceptable gloss with even finer sandpaper.

You can also (as I do): level the brush marks with high grit sandpaper, and then WIPE on a couple coats of Waterlox Original Sealer Finish Original Formula to restore the luster. You can apply this product every year to make it look new.

[Colin Dingler]

thanks for your responses. Jim, I mentioned at the beginning of my post that it is waterlox original. It is not the low VOC version.

Prashun, sanding with heavy grit and then refinishing sounds like something I'd try. When you use this method, what grit do you use, and do you sand by hand? How many coats does it take before you have a smooth surface again and don't see any wipe marks?

thanks

[Prashun Patel]

*** NOT SANDING WITH HEAVY GRIT ***

I mean sanding with a HIGH grit, like 400 or 600. This is done only to level the surface - not to remove the finish. Achieving a level surface will provide a more professional looking surface. OSF looks less like plastic as the surface cures. Having a nice film on a counter top is a good thing. My bartop is finished with Waterlox (high gloss) and it's about 7-8 years old and looks very good still.

[Colin Dingler]

oh, right. important clarification. thanks! do you have any advice for how I can deal with the counter on which I sanded with too large of a grit that now has squiggle marks from the OS?


*** NOT SANDING WITH HEAVY GRIT ***

I mean sanding with a HIGH grit, like 400 or 600. This is done only to level the surface - not to remove the finish. Achieving a level surface will provide a more professional looking surface. OSF looks less like plastic as the surface cures. Having a nice film on a counter top is a good thing. My bartop is finished with Waterlox (high gloss) and it's about 7-8 years old and looks very good still.

[Prashun Patel]

As the saying goes...

If the squiggle's in the wood, no good;

if the squiggle's in the finish, finer grits will diminish.

[Jim Becker]

thanks for your responses. Jim, I mentioned at the beginning of my post that it is waterlox original. It is not the low VOC version.
My apologies...I missed that one word...oy!

[Steve Van Kirk]

Hi Colin,

I did a dining table w/Waterlox OSF about a year and a half ago. I'd never used the product before & found this online:

http://www.finewoodworking.com/how-to/article/how-to-apply-wiping-varnish.aspx

I "sort of" followed the first 4 steps, but modified things along the way. (The last two steps (rubbing out & waxing) & didn't do. I didn't want the wax, & a rub-out wasn't practical given that the wood was reclaimed & had lots of imperfections, texture, etc.)

A few thoughts I recall from my experience:

1. Wiping (rather than brushing) allowed me to build the finish slowly & stop where I liked it.
2. During the wiping, I found that after the surface was wetted I definitely had to finish with a wipe in the direction of the grain or I'd get wipe marks here & there. But maybe I just wasn't applying it fast enough. On that note...
3. You have to wipe relatively quickly. Get in & get out. If you labor over it, you'll take too long & end up with wipe marks.
3. The last few coats I wet-sanded on & lightly wiped off. I recall using 400 or 600 grit wet/dry paper on some coats, and a 3M between-coats pad on others. And by "lightly wiped off" I mean the wipe-off rag was usually damp from removed finish so it was still leaving a little behind. When it got too wet I'd replace it. In other words, I wasn't making a point of removing every bit of excess with a completely dry rag. This approach seemed to work well. It left a silky feel & dried quickly - avoiding most dust nibs. After the final coat had dried, a quick rub-down with a folded up piece of brown paper bag removed the remaining nibs wo/altering the sheen. (BTW, this wet-sand-and-wipe approach also seemed to take the edge off the initial sheen. It was still glossy, but not as much so.)
4. The OSF sheen does indeed die down w/time. The table is a nice semi-gloss now, but was very glossy out of the can (as the mfg. & many experts in this forum have noted).

Lastly, I think the naturalness you're looking for in the finish will be dictated by the thickness of the build. If you put too much on - whether in thin coats or thick - the OSF will form a thick layer just like any other film finish (poly, etc.). And the thicker it gets, the less natural it'll look.

Hope this helps!

Steve

[Colin Dingler]

Steve, thanks for the detailed write up! I had to travel for work and am just getting back to reading your post. I'm a little wary of trying the wet-sand technique because that sounds more technical, and I had enough trouble with simple wipe-on. But I've got a spare piece of the butcher-block, so maybe I"ll try it out there.

I do have an unanswered finishing question that applied to any sanding between coats: when people talk about doing a light "scuff" sand with something like 320 before the final coat of varnish, is there an advantage to sanding by hand or a disadvantage to sanding with an orbital sander? I have open grit 320 pads for my RO sander, and I've had bad results with visible scratch marks when I sanded by hand with 320. Any tips about this technique?

thanks again to everyone for the advice.

[Prashun Patel]

I don't sand with 320 for After the penultimate coat. I would sand with 600 by hand. Don't sand for the look. Sand so your hand feels it as smooth. Dust and well without ms and wipe the final coat on.

With Waterlox osf the best technique for me is to wipe it on quickly without being hurried or frantic. use big overlapping circles. If you miss a spot, hit it with the rag. Then leave it.

[Alan Lightstone]

I agree. 320 IMHO is too coarse for sanding at that stage.

Like Prashun, I use 600 by hand for Waterlox OSF.

[Steve Van Kirk]

Hi Colin,

Hey - you're welcome. And BTW, the wet-sanding was very easy - it wasn't complicated or technical at all. My apologies if I made it seem so. And don't think of it as "sanding" per se. It's more like you're just applying wiping varnish with a piece of 600 grit sand paper instead of a cloth. The "accidental byproduct" of which is a smoother surface.

In terms of technique, I basically dipped the sandpaper in a jar of Waterlox OSF, lightly rubbed it onto the wood - with the grain or in small circles, either seemed to work because of the fine grit - and then lightly removed most of the excess as I described before. You could probably put the OSF in a small squirt bottle, too, but I didn't have one at the time.

BTW, it's not a precision job - you just rub it on relatively quickly & wipe it off. I did it on the last the last few coats, but you could just do it on the last coat alone if you're happy with the build to that point. (BTW, prior to this coat, build the finish however you want (wiping, brushing, etc.).)

Regarding your question about hand-sanding vs. ROS, I'll defer to the experts on this forum. In my limited experience I've found that it's very easy to sand through a layer of reactive finish (e.g. poly, etc.) with a ROS. This creates witness lines, which in my opinion are pretty much impossible to remove without going back to bare wood. They don't sand out, they just move around. And covering them up with the next coat helps, but they're still visible to a discerning eye. I was working with poly at the time, though, so I can't speak specifically about Waterlox in this area. I was also refinishing a drum (i.e. a curved surface); perhaps a flatter project would have made the ROS more feasible. I'm skeptical, though, and would encourage you to proceed with caution if you choose the ROS route. Especially since Waterlox is a wiping varnish (i.e. a thinned varnish), thus it will go on in thinner layers than the poly I was brushing.


Have a good one!

Steve

[Colin Dingler]

excellent information. Thanks, everyone. I'll give the 600 grit a try, and the wet sanding doesn't sound too daunting now. Because I was having trouble with the witness lines from oversanding with the ROS, I just applied a heavier coat with the foam brush, and that seems to have at least diminished their appearance. I'll play around with these wipe-on technique when I finish.

one other question: I've read various things about diluting the Waterlox Original to 50/50 with MS when wiping on. Is that what the folks on this thread did? Is it necessary, or just done for some other purpose?

[Scott DelPorte]

Hi Colin
I have only done a couple tables with Waterlox, and had some of the same learning pains you are experiencing, but in the end really liked it. There are two (maybe more?) flavors of "Original". One is a medium sheen sealer and finish (red can), and the other is a gloss finish (green can). One needs to be diluted with MS for wiping, and the other doesn't. I think its the green can that needs to be diluted, and the red one (sealer/finish) can be used for wiping as is. Someone here with a better knowledge of this stuff can confirm that, I might have that reversed.

[Steve Van Kirk]

Hi Colin,

For most coats I didn't thin the Waterlox. On the last coat or two, I was "forced" to. The remaining product I had in my working jar was starting to gel, and that was the last I had. I didn't need to apply much more, so I poured out the good liquid, thinned it, and used it to finish up. (I was hoping to avoid buying another quart just to finish the small bit I had left. In the end, I had to buy another quart anyways, but I don't remember why. :))

So I guess what I'm saying is that there's no need to thin it, but that if you want to, you're not going to hurt anything, either. You just won't build as quickly, if that's the stage you're in. And as I recall, the thinned stuff was slightly easier to spread. BUT, that could have been because the product in my working jar may have slowly started to thicken wo/really being noticeable, & adding MS maybe brought it closer to it's original consistency. My best guess, though, is that it was still thinner than the out-of-the-can consistency.

Hope this helps!

Steve

[Prashun Patel]

Scott is right. Dont thin original sealer finish.

[Colin Dingler]

so here's another quandary: after letting the last coat dry for 2.5 days, I went to give a final light sanding (600 grit paper this time) before the final coat, and it seemed like the coat *still* wasn't quite dry. rather than form a fine dust, it gummed up all over the paper making the sanding impossible. I had waited 2.5 days for it dry because in previous experiments when I waited the suggest 24 hours, the surface didn't seem dry.

I know that atmospheric issues affect drying speed, but it is about 70 degrees here and around 40% humidity in the room, so wouldn't more than twice the drying time be sufficient?

Yesterday, I ran into a different problem with the second counter top that I finished. On this one, I stuck to the mfr. directions of applying the coats with a brush--5-6 coats, some with a natural brush and the final ones with a foam brush. I installed the counter top in the kitchen after 2 weeks waiting to let it harden. One week has passed, so 3 weeks total. I put my food processor on it and left it overnight; when I went to move it, the rubber feet had stuck to the surface and tore off little divots. Waterlox customer service said that sometimes plasticizers can do this to the finish, but he seemed surprised that it happened after I let the product dry for 3 weeks.

Has anybody else run into problems where it seems like the surface simply isn't curing as it should? The WX rep suggested that my birch butcherblock may have come with a coat of wax on it--it certainly seemed unfinished to me, but even if it had some wax, why would that affect how the sixth coat of finish adheres to the rubber feet of an object set on top of it?

[Alan Lightstone]

I built a TV table for my son with a Waterlox OSF finish and had the rubber feet from the TV leave permanent marks when I placed the TV on it about 1 month after applying the last coat of finish.

There is something chemically in those rubber feet that reacts. Sorta like plasticizer issues with other materials.

[Prashun Patel]

Something is wrong if th finish will not dry in a couple days. A contaminated surface can prevent some finishes from drying hard. This can affect multiple layers. Even if you are able to entomb soft layers in hard top layers, they can eventually crack or wrinkle or blister.

When this has happened to me, the solution is sometimes to just wait a few more days. If the surface hardens you will probably be ok.

In the mean time, try executing your regimen on a test piece so you can confirm that the problem is not in fact bad finish, which can ask be your problem. Although, i suspect the former because with Waterlox if it goes bad your jar or can will become telltale bad jelly.

[Colin Dingler]

good to know that there may be a problem with these rubber feet that I need to watch out for in the future.

but I'm also suspecting now that something may have been wrong with the butcher-block surface or my method of preparing for the first coat. I decided to do an experiment with one of the leftover pieces of birch butcher-block:



on one part of the test piece, I followed directions that I read online to attempt to remove any wax that had been applied to the surface. To do this, I used mineral spirits and green 3m pad (some sources recommended amonia or acetone, but I had neither of those). It appeared that there was some residue coming off, so I wiped clean with a lint-free cloth and repeated several times until the surface seemed clean. Then I let it dry and sanded down with 120 grit paper, per the Waterlox instructions for preparing the unfinished surface.




On the other half of the test piece, I just left the surface as it came from the chain store (Menards). Interestingly, the untouched side seemed coarser to the touch than the de-waxed/sanded side.




As a control, I took a third piece of wood that I know is unfinsihed/unwaxed--a scrap of pine board. I sanded this down with 120.




Then I applied the same amount of Waterlox to each test area using a natural bristle brush. I left them to dry for 24 hours with good cross ventilation in a 70% room.


Results were surprising: The unfinished pine and the un-sanded side of the butcher block had an identical consistency--it looked like the WX fully penetrated into the wood and had an even, satin look. Surface was dry to the touch. However, the butcher block that I tried to de-wax and sanded with 120 had a totally different look. In fact, it looked just like the first coat that I applied several weeks ago when I started this project. The WX was glossy; it didn't appear to be absorbed into the wood, but rather it looked like it had dried on the surface, and there was more texture/impurities. It was still a little tacky to the touch. This makes me think that I screwed up somewhere in the first coat of finishing the counter that I have had curing problems with.

But the results don't point to a clear cause. Why did the experiment turn out better when I *didn't* do any prep (sanding or attempts at removing wax) to the butcher block? That seems counter-intuitive. It also makes me question this theory that wax is culprit with my slow curing times and compromised finish. Yet pre-sending doesn't seem to be the culprit, because the pine test piece turned out good.

Poorly designed experiment, I guess... Should I just continue to use the same brand of butcher block on the other side, omit any presanding, and hope it turns out better?

[Scott DelPorte]

Hi Colin, I had some problems with the finish not fully drying because I was adding coats too fast. It was dry to the touch, but easy to mark with a fingernail, and rubbery when sanded. I ended up sanding off all the rubbery stuff, then re-did it, but only adding one coat per day. Doing it this way was slow, but created no further problems.

I hope that's helpful. I was building a thick enough layer so I could sand and buff flat with filled pores, which might be different than the look you are going for.

[Brian Williamson]

good to know that there may be a problem with these rubber feet that I need to watch out for in the future.

but I'm also suspecting now that something may have been wrong with the butcher-block surface or my method of preparing for the first coat. I decided to do an experiment with one of the leftover pieces of birch butcher-block:



on one part of the test piece, I followed directions that I read online to attempt to remove any wax that had been applied to the surface. To do this, I used mineral spirits and green 3m pad (some sources recommended amonia or acetone, but I had neither of those). It appeared that there was some residue coming off, so I wiped clean with a lint-free cloth and repeated several times until the surface seemed clean. Then I let it dry and sanded down with 120 grit paper, per the Waterlox instructions for preparing the unfinished surface.




On the other half of the test piece, I just left the surface as it came from the chain store (Menards). Interestingly, the untouched side seemed coarser to the touch than the de-waxed/sanded side.




As a control, I took a third piece of wood that I know is unfinsihed/unwaxed--a scrap of pine board. I sanded this down with 120.




Then I applied the same amount of Waterlox to each test area using a natural bristle brush. I left them to dry for 24 hours with good cross ventilation in a 70% room.


Results were surprising: The unfinished pine and the un-sanded side of the butcher block had an identical consistency--it looked like the WX fully penetrated into the wood and had an even, satin look. Surface was dry to the touch. However, the butcher block that I tried to de-wax and sanded with 120 had a totally different look. In fact, it looked just like the first coat that I applied several weeks ago when I started this project. The WX was glossy; it didn't appear to be absorbed into the wood, but rather it looked like it had dried on the surface, and there was more texture/impurities. It was still a little tacky to the touch. This makes me think that I screwed up somewhere in the first coat of finishing the counter that I have had curing problems with.

But the results don't point to a clear cause. Why did the experiment turn out better when I *didn't* do any prep (sanding or attempts at removing wax) to the butcher block? That seems counter-intuitive. It also makes me question this theory that wax is culprit with my slow curing times and compromised finish. Yet pre-sending doesn't seem to be the culprit, because the pine test piece turned out good.

Poorly designed experiment, I guess... Should I just continue to use the same brand of butcher block on the other side, omit any presanding, and hope it turns out better?

I know, old post... but it sounds like your brand of MS is not compatible with the WLX.