Stains and thick polyurethanes make interesting wood look dull. Use an oil finish, which enhances the grain and natural beauty.
It takes one bad decision to learn an important lesson about wood: The wrong stain can ruin it. For me, that lesson came with the deck my dad built on our house when I was in high school. After a couple weekends of construction, he turned things over to the family. We picked a stain, something called cottage gray that must have reminded us of houses we’d rented on beach vacations. Maybe we thought it’d be a constant reminder to relax. It was a poor choice. The gray clashed with the red brick of the house. Selfishly, my dad wasn’t willing to rebuild the deck, so we tried to cover it with a dark brown. That worked, in that it looked...fine. For some reason it was only at this point that we looked over at our neighbors’ deck and saw what we should have done: a simple, clear wood finish. The grain showed through. Knots and subtle flaws highlighted the character. Unlike ours, their deck looked good.
Since then, I’ve never liked to cover wood with any kind of stain. For me, the best way to finish even moderately attractive wood is with oil and wax. It’s not durable enough for a kitchen table, but an oil finish is perfect for a bookcase, chair, or chest of drawers. When you have something beautiful, you don’t want to cover it up.
1 IDENTIFY YOUR WOOD
This story is from the July/August 2017 edition of Popular Mechanics.
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This story is from the July/August 2017 edition of Popular Mechanics.
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