Using BLO and a washcoat

[Mark A Smith]

First off this is my first post here and all the knowledge on this forum is overwellming. So please go easy on me. I am in the stage of finishing a cherry clock. I want to finish it with blo and then waterlox. I tried on scrap cherry to wipe on a heavy coat of blo and let it set for 30 min. and then wiped it dry. The look is great but, it splotched very badly. My question is can I first put a washcoat of dewaxed shellac and then put on the blo. Or will this stop the blo from penetrating at all. Thanks Mark

[Cecil Arnold]

Welcome to the creek Mark. IMHO I think if you use about 1/2 lb. cut for your wash coat it may work. Cherry is really bad about splotching, you might think about a cherry gel stain then BLO as an alternative. I'm sure others with more time working cherry will chime in with other ideas.

[Steve Schoene]

A 1/2 lb. cut of shellac is very thin and imparts very little sealing, so an oil finish should still work OK. Try it on your particular wood samples. And a very light coat of BLO is all you need for kicking off the cherry coloration.

But the BLO won't do very much for you compared to the Waterlox, which is a thinned oil based varnish (in the original sealer/finish version). Try a sample with a wiped on coat of the Waterlox. You may see little difference.

The other thing to note is that "splotching" can be well thought of as figure. For example, the Thomas Moser cherry furniture, relatively high end manufactured furniture, makes no attempt to limit the blotching. It's a part of cherry.