36 power buffing in action

One of the biggest challenges of woodworking is finishing. It's sometimes a lot easier to do a good project

until you get to the finishing part and that's where disappointment often sets in

This is especially true if you're working in a home shop and you're applying a finish with a brush

So I want to show you a technique here that will allow you to produce glass smooth finishes without spray equipment

just using an ordinary brush and urethane finish. Now you need to start with a finish of sufficient thickness

So that would be at least three coats of urethane and preferably four

The problem at this stage is that your surface is probably going to have little bumps on it

from dust particles that have settled out from the air. There may be some brush marks too and these are the things that would make the finish ugly

and these are the things that I'm going to show you how to remove after the fact

It all comes down to the right kind of abrasion. So what you want to begin with is a piece of fine sandpaper

This is 320 grit and it's wrapped around a piece of foam

This could be styrofoam. This is a little squishier than styrofoam. You don't want to wrap it around a wooden block

You want something with a little bit of resilience but you don't want to use the sandpaper by hand

Now this sample here has four coats of water-based urethane and the first step involves knocking off the dust bumps

So you're just drawing this back and forth across the surface like this

You're not trying to remove a significant amount of the finish. You want to knock off those little high spots

You want to knock off the mountain. And you're going to know if you've done that sufficiently with your fingertips

A little bit of movement of this sanding block with paper on it is going to yield a much smoother finish

You'll feel the difference immediately. It's going to be smooth but it's not going to have an even sheen

Where more abrasion happens it's going to be dull. And where less abrasion happened it's going to be shinier

So further refining the surface is what happens next. And that's where something like this comes in

This is a 3M rubbing pad so it's non-woven. This is the fine grit

And you want to use this, believe it or not, in conjunction with a random orbit sander

With no abrasive disc on it. So the sander causes the rubbing pad to move and polishes the surface

Now if you want a matte finish or something with just a little bit of gloss to it

then all you need to use is this fine pad. It'll smoothen things out and give you just the tiniest little bit of sheen

If you want something shinier you'd follow this up with the super fine pad used in the same way

So this is what it looks like. It's really pretty simple. You can turn the speed of your sander down a little bit, at least at the beginning until you get the hang of it

So I'll just switch on and start the buffing. Now this is a very flat sheen

So you're not going to see some reflections off of it but it is extremely smooth

It just feels like a piece of glass. And it didn't start off that way

Now if you want it a little bit shinier you can continue with the power buffing using this ultra fine pad

Now it feels about the same but you can see some shiny reflections there

It can get even shinier if you buff more. So you do have quite a bit of control over the level of sheen that you can achieve

Now not every woodworking situation is as nice and flat and open as this sample piece I'm showing you here now

But the same process can be used on any kind of shape or profile

You can start with the knocking off of the dust bumps. And the only difference is that you don't use the random orbit sander for the buffing

You just do all the work by hand. And these are flexible enough that they can go around contours and along the edges of panels where they meet styles and rails

So you can get this kind of result on any surface you might be dealing with