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In this video, I want to give you an overview of what I call the basic urethane finish
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here's an example of it here and It's essentially it's a clear coated finish
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There's no color added this is a little bit more yellow than the wood originally was and that's just because
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Urethane kind of yellows things a little bit almost incidentally, but essentially the process
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Begins with a fair piece of wood like this Step number one and I'm going to go into all this in detail later
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step number one is sanding and You can see by looking at these two pieces of wood, this is a sanded piece
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By the way, these are these are just this is just construction grade spruce nothing fancy about this wood
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You don't need fancy wood in order to get a fancy nice finish so nice and smooth
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This one feels smooth. It looks smooth. Most people would look at that and say yeah
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I'm ready to start finishing that but actually you're not and if you look closely
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With shallow angle of light shining over the surface. You can see lots and lots of defects. So
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sanding step one Step two is you need to choose The kind of urethane you're going to use now urethane is a kind of a varnish in a sense varnish is
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Very a very broad term. It basically just means a clear sealer that sits on top of the wood
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so it doesn't just soak in it actually forms a protective film on the surface and
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urethane comes in two different basic types Water-based it's by far the most common
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But it's actually harder to get a good water-based urethane finish than it is to use
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oil-based finishes and that's because water-based finishes dry so quickly and that can be a challenge a challenge that can be overcome though and
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I'll be talking about that in a lot more detail later If you're applying
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water-based urethane It's best to do it with a foam applicator like this and I'll show you how this works in a little while
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If you're using oil-based urethane, then you're going to want to use some sort of a brush
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Natural bristle brush so pure bristle bristle actually means pig hair So these these grow out of a pig at one time and and they're made into a brush
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Same sort of thing here. If you're getting a brush pay attention to what it's made out of
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Synthetic bristle brushes or the the foam applicators. That's for water-based and
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For oil-based use up a bristle brush. So a natural bristle brush and it usually says right on the
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Right on the the package so you know what to do. You'll see these things
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in action So we've got our first coat of urethane on On this on wood that was smooth
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What you're going to notice and you always notice this is that the wood feels a whole lot rougher after that first coat of urethane dries
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and the reason for that is because No matter how smooth what is after sanding there are fibers of the wood that are lying down on the surface and it
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But when you put Any kind of a finishing liquid, especially a water-based finishing liquid those fibers
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Soak up the water or the finish and they swell and then they tend to stand upright
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And then harden in that way. Now, you're not going to see any of that. Of course, this is microscopic
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I'm talking about but you can certainly feel it and You can feel the wood being smooth and you can feel the wood being hard
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This is microscopic I'm talking about but you can certainly feel it
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so that's why part of the process of the basic urethane finish is
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Sanding especially after the first coat because that's when you're going to have the most sort of five o'clock shadow roughness kicking in
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I do like to sand between every other coat except the last one
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And some surface fibers still might stand up but after the first coat dries and you sand
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Then that second coat the the bumpiness that might be there is more to do with perhaps some dust that has settled from the air
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Or something like that. You're not going to get the same Problem with the standing up fiber business, but it still pays
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To sand lightly after each coat and to vacuum Very important. It doesn't matter what kind of vacuum you use
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But you really need a surgically clean surface as clean as you can possibly get it
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Within a normal atmosphere like a workshop or a garage or a basement or even in the middle of your house
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so vacuuming very important and For the basic urethane finish you're going to want to put on at least three coats
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I would recommend four if it's an environment where you're going to run into some water
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Maybe kitchen cabinet bathroom cabinet something like that Another reason to use more than three coats is because of a process called buffing
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now buffing is where you take a Quite good urethane finish something like this and you elevate it to a really high
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quality level So much so that it feels like glass Using a process of finally abrading that surface
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So buffing that surface you need to have a sufficient film thickness for that to happen
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And that's why I recommend four coats for buffing, but you don't have to remember any of this as I said
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This is an overview. We're going to be going into minute detail. So Essentially the first time you try this if you follow my methods you will get
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Excellent results that look and feel just wonderfully smooth like this So we're going to make that happen with these with some some test blanks as we go through the different processes
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but that's the basic urethane finish and you know if I had to recommend just one finish for you to master and
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To apply to all of your wood finishing needs this would be it it's
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Durable enough that it can protect wood from just about the sort of the wettiest
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nastiest circumstances you're likely to run into indoors But it also works really well. It works beautifully. There are other methods that I'm going to be talking about
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Easier to apply than this, but maybe not quite as durable So lots to think about but let's get busy studying the basic urethane finish
