Finish Advice

[Jim VanBramer]

I recently made a project and used gloss poly as a finish. Now that it's done I'm thinking that it's just a bit "too glossy". Is there a way to reduce that sheen down just a little? Thanks.

Jim V

[Charlie Plesums]

The classic technique is to rub the finish with fine steel wool until the desired degree of sheen is reached. However, polyurethane is a very hard finish, thus is hard to rub to a lower sheen.

Clear finish such as lacquer or polyurethane that have a semi-gloss or satin finish include a "powder" that dulls the final finish. Since I don't want all the coats to include the powder, I normally use gloss for all the coats except the last one or two coats, then switch to the semi-gloss or satin finish. Therefore the easy solution is to just put on another coat, using semi-gloss or satin poly.