Hello everybody,
My dining table made of recycled wood need a refreshing. After planing, what finishes would you recommend? I'd like it to be easy to clean and have a matte finish.
Thanks !
Polyurethane is the standard but I like hardening oils over polyurethanes, personally. BLO or Rubio monocoat if you have the money and want it as-easy-as-possible. Don't finish while you have large holes as the liquid will accumulate and get gummy instead of soaking into the wood. So prep the surface like the other poster suggested. If you do use BLO or similar be careful with the rags afterwards, people have burned down their houses.
Lacquer isn't great for dining tables because of its sensitivity to water and scratches
Thank you for your detailed response. Do you recommand wood sealer before oil ?
No, I think sealer will keep the oil from soaking in. Just plane like you planned, sand/scrape as you like and make sure the surface is clean. I'd you want it to be very smooth, look up 'water popping" which is water spray and sanding. Microfiber is good for cleaning up dust.
Neat bug holes. If I were you I'd get it back down to bare wood and then squirt some wood glue into the holes. Then take a putty knife or credit card and scrape/ smoosh the glue down into all the holes until it's pretty well flush. Then take some old sandpaper ( you can use a new disc/sheet but it will be gummed up after this) and start sanding with the grain. If you're using a power sander do not use dust collection. After a little sanding the holes will disappear as the sawdust and wood glue create a stainable, color matched patch. Let it sit for at least an hour but preferably overnight before finishing.
As to finishing, I pretty well use Danish oil on just about everything when I'm looking for a matte finish. 1-2 coats will leave it still feeling like wood. 3+ coats you start getting the plasticky feel as the layers build up and form a shell.
Good luck and have fun!
Thank you very much, I'll try this ! Do I need to do something between oil coats ?
With Danish oil you saturate the wood (I use a rag) and let it set for 5 min and then wipe away excess with a dry rag. I usually only do two coats because I like the wood to feel like wood. And if I'm only doing two coats I will generally only wait 5 - 10 min for the first coat to dry before saturating the wood for the second coat.
If you're going for that more plasticky finish then I would wait for at least an hour of drying between coats. Then right before you apply the last coat of Danish oil you can hit it (very lightly) with some 180+ grit sandpaper on a random orbit sander. Then just make sure to wipe your sanding dust off before saturating the wood with the final coat. This will give you a Supa-Smooth finish that will have everyone at the table rubbing it like weirdos.
rubbing it like weirdos.
How dare you! I resemble this remark...
You're going to want to fill and then sand that edge piece no matter what you do...
https://woodworkingadvisor.com/how-to-fill-holes-in-wood/
Once that is done, then finish it however you want. But before you start, evaluate if you want to just flip that edge board, you most likely do.
Thanks for your answer ! Do you recommand to fill the little gap between wooden slats too ?
What some people do, is epoxy seal the whole thing onces it's finished, but then you're committing to that look and it'll take a lot of sanding to change it. It also means all the different pieces of wood can't expand/contract on their own. But then you get that perfectly smooth easy to clean surface. I've never done it, but plenty of YouTube videos show the process.
What Id recommend, is just paying attention now to if crumbs/dust/whatever get stuck there. And filling those places.
If a quick wipe cleans out the cracks, not a big deal.
If theyre deep enough to trap stuff, then yeah, you'd want to fill it to make future cleaning easy. Or keep a dustbuster handy. Like that corner with a triangle missing, crud will get stuck there and it's going to always be dirty.
But anything youd want to fill, now is the time. That way it can be filled, sanded level, and stained with everything else. It should all blend in this way, and not really be noticable.
Tung oil
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