How to make wood pop / Accentuate grain and Chatoyance with Water-Borne Finish

[Alan Lightstone]

OK. Waving the white flag. I waited a month, then tried rubbing out the drafting table top with Micro Mesh. Low and behold - Lots of witness lines. Aaaarrghhhhhh!!!!!!

Clearly rubbing out with Waterlox is beyond my capabilities. I just can't do it. It's been 3 months since I finished the intial coats of Waterlox on the table top, I've tried rubbing it out on two separate occasions after initially failing, and redoing multiple coats of Waterlox. I'm out of my league.

Plan B will be to spray EM6000, several coats on top of the present Waterlox (do I need to put a dewaxed shellac coat on top for compatibility?), wait until that cures, then rub that out. If that doesn't work, who here wants to finish a table top?????

Actually, a question for everyone. It says that EM6000 and EM7000HBL are "100% burn in".

Which of the following Target Coatings finishes burn into themselves:

EM 2000 Waterborne Alkyd Varnish?
EM 6000 Production Lacquer? (Web site says this is 100% burn-in)
EM 7000HBL High Build Lacquer? (Web site says this is 100% burn-in)
EM 8000 Conversion Varnish?

[Jim Becker]

Only EM6000 and the new EM7000HBL exhibit "burn-in" characteristics, as far as I know. I've never used the latter, but the former is my primary top-coat finish and has been for years, if you consider I used two generations of predecessors before the EM6000 name came into being.

You should be able to shoot directly on top of the existing Waterlox after scuffing, but there's no harm in a quick, thin barrier coat of de-waxed shellac before shooting the EM6000.

[Alan Lightstone]

Thanks, Jim. Already have the EM6000, so just need to finish my knock-down spray booth to give this a go.

[Julie Moriarty]

While Googling "How to make wood pop" this thread came up. And then I read the wood being used is sapele. Perfect!

I'm really trying hard to do the waterborne thing. Practically all the finishing I do is in the basement. I don't need to comment on odors imparted throughout the house.

So I purchased some General Finishes WB products - Medium Brown dye, Vintage Cherry dye and Enduro-Var in satin. The project is kitchen cabinet doors and drawer fronts. The drawer fronts and the door rails & stiles will be solid Honduran mahogany, the door panels sapele.

After a number of tests, I realized the sapele will darken more than the mahogany so I purchased the dyes just for the mahogany. I'm pretty happy with the Vintage Cherry on the mahogany, compared side-by-side with mineral spirit saturated sapele.

I was told the Enduro-Var imparted an amber hue and was the closest WB finish one could get to oils. So I took a test piece of sapele and laid down a couple coats of Enduro-Var. BLAH! No pop, no life, no "like oil" finish and nothing even close to the mineral spirit saturated appearance. Next I tried garnet shellac and BLO. The shellac was very close to the Enduro-Var. That surprised me. I thought there would be some pop, but there wasn't. The BLO however, was beautiful! The grain popped. Viewing from different angles gave the feeling of "motion" in the wood. It was just gorgeous! And that's why we chose sapele, for that rich look properly finished sapele can give.

My plans were to spray the finish. I was unsure about the dye, but the Enduro-Var, spray for sure. There's 35 doors and about a dozen drawer fronts. And I just started the basement spray booth but only for WB finishes. The booth is not explosion proofed.

So if I use BLO for the sapele, give it a week or so to dry, is there any reason I can't finish with the Enduro-Var?

[Julie Moriarty]

Doesn't it figure? Just when you've given up on trying to find the answer and post the question online, you find the article with the answer.

Teri Masaschi wrote an article for FWW about spraying WB finishes. I read it before but my photographic memory was out of film. It usually is. Anyway, right at the end I read if you use an oil to enhance the grain, you need to coat it with dewaxed shellac before spraying the WB finish.

And I thought this was going to be easy.