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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
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and that's just because urethane kind of yellows things a little bit, almost incidentally
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But essentially the process begins with a bare piece of wood like this
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Step number one, and I'm going to go into all this in detail later, step number one is sanding
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And you can see by looking at these two pieces of wood, this is a sanded piece
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By the way, 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. This one feels smooth. It looks smooth. Most people would
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look at that and say, yeah, I'm ready to start finishing that. But actually, you're not
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And if you look closely with shallow angle of light shining over the surface, you can see lots and
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lots of defects. So sanding, step one. Step two is you need to choose the kind of urethane
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you're going to use. Now, urethane is a kind of a varnish in a sense. Varnish is a very
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broad term. It basically just means a clear sealer that sits on top of the wood. So
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it doesn just soak in It actually forms a protective film on the surface And urethane comes in two different basic types
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Water-based, it's by far the most common. But it's actually harder to get a good water-based urethane finish
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than it is to use oil-based finishes, and that's because water-based finishes dry so quickly
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And that can be a challenge. It can be overcome though and I'll be talking about that in a lot more detail later
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If you're applying water-based urethane, it's best to do it with a foam applicator like this
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And I'll show you how this works in a little while. If you're using oil-based erythane, then you're going to want to use some sort of a brush, natural bristle brush
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So pure bristle. Bristle actually means pig hair. So these grow out of a pig at one time 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 foam applicators. That's for water based. And for oil based, you use a bristle brush, so a natural bristle brush
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And it usually says right on the package so you know what to do
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You'll see these things in action quite a bit more later. So we've got our first coat of urethane on
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on this wood that was smooth. What you're going to notice, and you always notice this
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is that the wood feels a whole lot rougher after that first coat of urethane dries And the reason for that is because no matter how smooth wood is after sanding
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there are fibers of the wood that are lying down on the surface, and they feel smooth to your hand
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But when you put any kind of a finishing liquid, especially a water-based finishing liquid
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those fibers 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
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This is microscopic I'm talking about, but you can certainly feel it. So that's why part of the process
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of the basic urethane finish is sanding, especially after the first coat
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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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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 bumpiness that might be there is more to do with perhaps some dust
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that has settled from the air or something like that. You're not going to get the same problem
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with the standing up fiber business, but it still pays to sand lightly after each coat
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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 gonna wanna put on at least three coats I would recommend four if it an environment where you going to run into some water maybe kitchen cabinet bathroom cabinet something like that
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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
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and you elevate it to a really high quality level, so much so
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that it feels like glass using a process of finely 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
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As I said, this is an overview. We're going to be going into minute detail. So essentially, the first time you try this
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if you follow my methods, you will get excellent results that look and feel just wonderfully smooth
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this. So we're going to make that happen with these with some some test
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blanks as we go through the different processes but that's the basic
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urethane finish and you know if I had to recommend just one finish for you to
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master and 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
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wettiest, wettest 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
