Woodworking is the art of crafting wooden products from raw timber. Woodworking has a long background, the roots of the craft can be mapped back as far as 10,000 years. We may receive a commission when you use our affiliate links. However, this does not impact our recommendations. Home-store finishing. You don’t have to go to specialty retailers to find finishing supplies; you can produce a quality finish from products readily available at home centers. You can achieve a great finish from commonly available products. We all love home centers for the good stuff they carry and for their low prices. But home centers cater to the lowest common denominator consumer – that is, they carry only the stuff that has a big market. The result is that many of the finishing products used on furniture and cabinets, products you read about in woodworking magazines or hear about in woodworking classes, are rarely found in these stores. Examples include very fine-grit sandpapers, dyes, glazes, paste wood fillers, spray lacquers and high-performance finishes such as catalyzed lacquer. So how do you proceed if you have to do your finishing entirely from the products available at home centers? It’s not all that difficult, really. You’re just limited in some of the decorative effects you can achieve – decorative effects you’re probably not interested in anyway because you’re using the natural color and figure of the wood for your decoration. With the limited choice of finishing products at home centers, you can still get all the following: Protection and durability ranging from minimal to the best possible A sheen ranging from gloss to dead flat Finishes ranging from amber to colorless A near-flawless finish resembling sprayed lacquer Elimination of blotching from stains A glaze substitute A pore-filling option The ability to block off problems in the wood. Marketing Before proceeding with how to accomplish these objectives, I want to explain how companies producing and marketing finishing materials sell their products (how all companies probably sell their products, for that matter). Finish companies target specific markets. Within any given category – oil stain, varnish, water-based finish, etc. – all companies’ products are very similar, if not identical. But because stores and catalogs carry different brands, and because the marketing can sometimes make you believe some brands are somehow better than others, you may think you’re getting inferior products at low-end, mass-consumer home centers when you’re not. For example, a big brand name in home centers is Minwax, while General Finishes and Behlen dominate in woodworking stores and catalogs, and Old Masters is popular in independent paint stores. There are also stores that feature Sherwin-Williams, Benjamin Moore, Pratt Lambert, Varathane and many other brands. In addition, some companies target just contractors, others target cabinet and furniture makers, and still others (an entirely different group of companies) target refinishers. Within any finish category – oil stain, glaze, varnish, lacquer, etc. – all these companies make essentially the same thing. They all have access to the same raw materials, and the instructions for putting these raw materials together are available to everyone, even to you and me if we want them. So there’s nothing at all inferior about the finishing products available at home centers. There’s only a limitation of what’s available. From these limited choices, however, you have many possibilities for achieving the results you want. Protection and Durability The aging process. Boiled linseed oil and 100 percent tung oil add yellow coloring to the wood initially but then darken significantly as they age. This oak board was finished with three coats of each finish more than five years ago. From the left are boiled linseed oil, 100 percent tung oil, wiping varnish (varnish thinned half with mineral spirits), and a half-and-half mixture of boiled linseed oil and varnish. Notice that the linseed and tung oils have oranged about the same and that the mixture of oil and varnish has darkened about halfway between that of the oils and varnish alone. You have control of the amount of protection and durability you get simply by how much you build your finish and by your choice of finish. Protection means resistance to moisture penetration into the wood – in liquid or vapor (humidity) form. All finishes provide better resistance the thicker they are,...