How to Get Waterborne Finishes to Look Like Oil Based Varnish

[John TenEyck]

Waterborne finishes typically have little color of their own and can look pretty blah compared to the warm amber appearance of most oil based varnishes. It's often advised to use a coat of Sealcoat or other dewaxed shellac first to help impart that amber tone before applying the waterborne topcoat. I've done it myself many times but I wanted to see if it's universally true so I created some test specimens using several of the waterborne finishes I typically use. I used Arm-R-Seal as the oil based varnish benchmark.

From left to right on rift sawn white oak Arm-R-Seal, General Finish EnduroVar, General Finish High Performance, General Finish Enduro Clear Poly, Target Coatings EM-8000CV. The top half were given a coat of Sealcoat shellac first, then the the entire panel was finished with 3 coats of finish for the WB products, and 4 for Arm-R-Seal.




Sealcoat actually slightly lightened the look of Arm-R-Seal. It had little effect on EnduroVar and EM-8000CV; might have shifted them slightly red. It was only on the the very clear waterborne products of High Performance and Enduro Clear Poly that Sealcoat had a measured impact and definitely made them look more like Arm-R-Seal. Of the products I tested, EM-8000CV looked most like Arm-R-Seal straight out of the can. I also found it surprising how much darker EnduroVar was compared to Arm-R-Seal.

Next I looked if I could approximate the look of Arm-R-Seal by adding dye to a waterborne, specifically GFs High Performance. From left to right, the Arm-R-Seal and HP specimens from above, then HP with one drop of Transtint Dark Vintage Maple in 30 mil of finish, and on the right HP with 2 drops of Transtint Honey Amber in 30 ml of finish. For the right two specimens I applied one coat of the toner then two additional coats of HP straight from the can.



The results show that the HP + Dark Vintage Maple looks a lot like Arm-R-Seal. You can extrapolate that you can create any color you want by which Transtint you choose and how much you add. Of course, dying the wood first would get you there, too. The point is some waterborne finishes are pretty bland, but you can push them towards the look of oil based varnish, and beyond, by adding dye to them or first dying the wood.

I looked at Sapele, too.

From left to right: Arm-R-Seal, EM-8000CV, GF's Enduro Clear Poly:




And here we have EnduroVar, SealCoat shellac + EnduroVar, and SealCoat shellac + EM-8000CV



On Sapele SealCoat brightened the appearance of EnduroVar and EM-8000CV slightly. EM-8000CV looked more like Arm-R-Seal than GF Clear Poly, but GF's EnduroVar looked more like Arm-R-Seal than Arm-R-Seal! Stunning, with or without SealCoat first.

Overall, SealCoat shellac can sometimes give you the look of an oil based varnish when applied under a waterborne topcoat. But there are other ways to adjust the color. The little study I did with Transtint dyes shows you can match the color pretty easily, and you also can get any color you want. Finally, some waterborne products look every bit as rich and vibrant as oil based varnish on some woods straight from the can; EM-8000CV on white oak and EnduroVar on Sapele being the two from this study that did that very well.

John

[Jim Becker]

Great test, John. If you do this again, I hope you'll have some EM2000 to add to the mix, too. It's an emulsified alkyd waterborne which looks pretty close to an oil based product in my experience.

[John TenEyck]

I haven't used EM-2000 yet, Jim, but hope to soon.

John

[Jamie Buxton]

Very interesting, John.

[Mike Henderson]

Good information. Early in my woodworking, I built a dining room table for someone out of walnut. I finished it with a water borne finish. A few days after I delivered it, I got a call back that the color was too "white". So I took it back, stripped off the finish, put on a coat of shellac and finished it with the same water borne finish. She was happy with it then.

I think you have to do something with most water borne finishes to make them acceptable to people.

Mike

[Mike Monroe]

Great information to have on hand, a few more words and I can see this as an article in Fine Woodworking.

[Tom M King]

Could be a sticky, at the top of this forum. Saves some of us a lot of trouble!

[roger wiegand]

Thanks very much for this! Definitely deserve a sticky and expansion to a magazine article.

I recently refinished a rosewood organ case and used a ruby shellac under EM2000 and it came out extremely well, very close to the look of the original shellac finish.

[Bob McBreen]

Thank you for taking the time to make all of the samples & post the results. I never would have guessed at the results.

[Prashun Patel]

Cool study. You have a lot of patience John. Your study focused on color. Did you find differences in clarity??

[John TenEyck]

Cool study. You have a lot of patience John. Your study focused on color. Did you find differences in clarity??

Unfortuntetly, some of the finishes were gloss and some were satin, so I can't do an across the board look at clarity. But I will take some more photos of the gloss ones to see if I can show any differences. I do know that the grain wasn't remarkably clearer under Arm-R-Seal than the gloss WB products.

I also plan to do some chemical testing on these samples after they have cured, so stay tuned for more.

John

[roger wiegand]

Sounds like we have a book in the making! Put me on the list for a copy.

[Tim Janssen]

I will have to save this thread because I know very little about finishing. My shop is in the basement so I like to work with water-based finishes, particularly during
heating season. Thank you so much for putting so much effort into this. This will be very helpful to many wood workers.

Tim

[Curt Harms]

Shellac under a WB top coat isn't a bad idea anyway, really helps with the grain raising. Like Tim any spraying for me during cold weather is indoor where water based is the only spraying game in town.

[Patrick Kane]

Thanks for taking the time and posting the results! It seems almost universal that people say "oil finishes look so much better than waterbourne finishes", and after spraying almost 20 gallons of GF Endurovar over the years, i dont think that statement is universally true. Even if oil based finishes do look slightly better(im not saying there is an appreciable difference between oil based varnish and endurovar) the benefits of waterbourne finishes puts them over the top for me. Easy clean up after spraying. They cure much faster. Completing a full finish schedule in a weekend is actually possible with WB finishes. Finally, the total VOC content is less in WB finishes, and i dont think the environmental aspect is ever discussed.