Dovetail & Grain

Tag: Wood Finish

  • Finishing End-Grain Boards

    Finishing End-Grain Boards

    End-grain boards drink finish. That is the whole difficulty, and the whole reason they last: a surface made of open straws takes oil deep into the fibres and closes back around a knife rather than being scored by it.

    An end-grain chopping board being oiled with a cloth
    First coat going on. It disappears almost as fast as you can apply it.

    Sand further than feels sensible

    Up to 220 on the faces, and do not stop early because it already feels smooth dry. Raise the grain with a damp cloth, let it dry, and knock it back with the same grit. Skip that step and the first oiling raises a nap that has to be dealt with when the surface is already wet.

    Oil until it stops drinking

    1. Flood the end grain with food-safe mineral oil. Genuinely flood it.
    2. Leave twenty minutes. Add more anywhere it has gone dull.
    3. Repeat until the surface still looks wet after half an hour. Three or four rounds on a new board.
    4. Wipe off everything that has not soaked in and leave it overnight.

    Then wax

    A beeswax and mineral oil paste over the top, buffed hard. The wax does not protect much on its own but it slows water getting in at the end grain, which is where a board fails — a split that starts at the edge and walks inward over a couple of years.

    Never use a drying oil — linseed, tung, Danish oil, hard wax oil — on a board that will meet food. Not because the cured film is harmful, but because the customer cannot reapply it from a supermarket, and a board that is never re-oiled is a board that splits.

    Telling the customer

    Every board leaves here with the same three sentences: wash it by hand, stand it on edge to dry, and oil it whenever it looks thirsty. That is roughly monthly at first and twice a year after the first year. Boards that come back to us cracked have almost always been through a dishwasher exactly once.

  • Shellac vs Lacquer

    Both are film finishes, both dry fast, and they behave very differently once something goes wrong. Which is the only comparison that matters after the first month.

    Shellac

    Dissolves into itself. A new coat melts into the old one, so a repair blends invisibly and there is never a witness line. It also dissolves in alcohol, which is why it has no business on anything that will hold a drink.

    Lacquer

    Harder, more water resistant, and sprayed rather than brushed if you want it to look like anything. Repairs are possible but visible. It is a production finish, and it makes most sense when there are twenty identical doors to do.

    Choose the one whose failure mode you can live with, not the one that fails least often.

  • Oil Stain Mishaps

    Every workshop has a shelf of things that went wrong. This is ours, written up in the hope that somebody else does not have to learn the same way.

    Blotching on pine

    Softwoods take stain unevenly because the early and late growth drink at different rates. The fix is a conditioner or a thin coat of shellac first, which partly seals the thirsty areas. We learned this on a customer’s blanket chest and had to sand the whole thing back.

    Lap marks

    Stopping halfway across a wide panel leaves a line you cannot remove. Work the full length of a surface in one pass, keep a wet edge, and do not answer the phone in the middle of a tabletop.

    Nothing in finishing is fast. Everything that looks like a shortcut is a sanding job in disguise.

    Rags, again

    A bundled oily rag left in the bin on a Friday was warm to the touch on Saturday morning. Nothing came of it. It very easily could have, and rags have gone flat on the concrete to dry ever since.

  • Finish Samples 2025

    Finish Samples 2025

    These sample boards are here to help customers choose a finish before we put it on a finished piece. By showing hard wax oil, Danish oil and shellac on the same timbers we use for furniture, they make it easier to compare colour, sheen and feel in real light rather than guessing from a tin or a photograph.

    This Year’s Sample Boards

    A row of finish test pieces on a bench, each divided into sections
    Oak, walnut and ash, each divided so the three finishes meet on one board.

    Each board is half hard wax oil, a quarter Danish oil and a quarter shellac, so you can see the three side by side on the same piece of timber. The divisions are masked with tape and the boundaries fall along the grain, not across it, which makes the comparison honest.

    How to look at them

    • In the light of the room the furniture is going into. Workshop light flatters everything.
    • At a raking angle as well as straight on. Sheen only shows at a glance across the surface.
    • Wet a corner. Every one of these darkens under a spill and comes back differently.

    What changed this year

    The hard wax oil has been reformulated and goes on noticeably thinner than the 2024 tin. Two coats now give what used to take two and a half, and it levels better on end grain. The Danish oil is unchanged. The shellac is our own, cut from flakes at a two-pound cut, so it varies a little batch to batch and always will.

    The boards live on the shelf by the door. Customers are welcome to take one home for a few days — a sample seen in your own kitchen settles a decision that a shop full of options never will.

  • Hard Wax Oil vs Danish Oil

    Hard Wax Oil vs Danish Oil

    These two come up in every finishing conversation, usually as if they were interchangeable. They are not. They are built differently, they behave differently under a wet glass, and they ask different things of whoever owns the piece afterwards.

    Two tins of oil beside a rag and a brush on a workbench
    Same board, same day, same room. The difference shows up in week three, not on the bench.

    What is actually in them

    Danish oil is thinned varnish. Some linseed or tung oil, some resin, a lot of white spirit. It soaks in, a little resin stays behind, and the surface builds slowly over several coats.

    Hard wax oil is oil plus wax plus driers, with much less solvent. It penetrates less and leaves more behind, so two coats do what four coats of Danish oil do, and the wax gives a surface that beads water rather than absorbing it.

    Hard wax oilDanish oil
    Coats23–4
    Dry between coats8–12 h6–8 h
    Full cure7 days14–21 days
    Water ringsRareCommon in year one
    FeelSlight sheen, close to bareWarmer, slightly softer

    Where each one belongs

    • Dining tables, desks, worktops — hard wax oil, every time.
    • Tool handles, small boxes, anything handled daily — Danish oil. The softer surface takes on a patina rather than wearing through.
    • Chair frames and spindles — either, but Danish oil is easier to apply into the awkward corners without leaving a run.
    • Anything a customer will maintain themselves — hard wax oil, because a refresh coat is a cloth and twenty minutes.

    The mistake we see most

    Too much of either. Both finishes want to be wiped on thin and wiped off again. The instinct is to flood the surface and leave it to soak, which gives you a sticky film that never quite hardens and has to be cut back with a scotch pad a week later.

    Put it on. Leave it ten minutes. Take it off. Anything still on the surface after that is not finish, it is a problem waiting.

    Rags

    Both of these are drying oils and both generate heat as they cure. A bundled oily rag left in a bin can and does self-ignite. Lay rags out flat to dry, or drop them in water in a metal tin. This is not a theoretical risk — it is the single most common cause of workshop fires.

    If you only take one thing from this: the finish you can repair is worth more than the finish that resists damage slightly longer. Both of these are repairable. That is why we use them.

  • Choosing the Right Finish

    Choosing the Right Finish

    Most of the questions we get about finishing are really questions about maintenance. What people want to know is not which finish looks best on the day, but which one they can live with in five years when a mug has been left on it.

    Finish samples brushed onto offcut boards, side by side
    The same oak offcut, four finishes, one coat each. The differences get larger with the second coat, not smaller.

    The two families

    Finishes either sit on the wood or soak into it. Film finishes — lacquer, varnish, shellac — build a layer on the surface. They protect well and they fail visibly: a scratch goes through the film and catches the light. Penetrating finishes — oils and hard wax oils — go into the fibres. They protect less and they fail invisibly, which usually means you can fix them with a rag.

    Neither is better. The question is who is going to look after the piece, and how much they want to think about it.

    FinishWater resistanceRepairableCoats
    Hard wax oilGoodVery — spot repair with a rag2
    Danish oilModerateVery3–4
    ShellacPoorYes, dissolves into itself4–6
    PolyurethaneExcellentNo — strip and redo2–3

    What we use, and when

    Hard wax oil on nearly everything. It gives a finish close to bare wood, it is repairable by anyone with a cloth, and two coats is genuinely enough. On a dining table that will see daily use, we add a third coat on the top only.

    Danish oil on tool handles and small items, where the slightly softer surface is an advantage and the piece is easy to re-oil. Shellac under a wax on anything that will never see a drink — boxes, frames, the inside of cabinets.

    Polyurethane almost never, and only on request. It is the toughest thing on the list and the least pleasant to live with: it looks like plastic under raking light, and when it does eventually fail there is nothing to do but strip the whole surface.

    Kitchen surfaces

    Food contact: anything that will meet food directly — boards, bowls, spoons — gets food-safe mineral oil and nothing else. Not because the others are dangerous once cured, but because mineral oil is the only one a customer can reapply from a supermarket without asking us first.

    Test on the offcut

    Every board finishes differently, and the sample in the tin lid was made on something that is not your timber. Keep the offcuts from the piece you are building, finish them alongside, and look at them in the light of the room the furniture is going into. It takes an afternoon and it has saved us from several expensive opinions.