Help with Varnish

[SMALMALEKI]

Hi there

I am very inexperienced in woodworking. Just finished my third ever project.

It is a bed for my son. He wanted a blue, red and green bed. To get a middle ground I have used sticky wood cuts alphabet to decorate the headboard.
Would couple of varnish coating seal in the glued on alphabets or is it going to be useless?
I have already applied three costs of finishing oil.

Thank you for your opinions.

 

[thetyreman]

oil takes a long time to fully cure, we're talking a few months, so if you were going to varnish it you'd have to wait a long time, unless it was danish oil, I probably wouldn't bother with varnishing it just leave it as it is.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Aerosol melamime or acrylic, several light coats and you'll get no runs.

 

[ED65]

Would couple of varnish coating seal in the glued on alphabets or is it going to be useless?
I have already applied three costs of finishing oil.

Varnish will likely provide a great deal more protection than finishing oil would, but it depends on what that is (the name can be applied to nearly anything). What did you use exactly?

Whether varnish will do enough I don't think anyone can say. I'd bet the adhesive used on the letters will be the Achilles heel here, no matter what you overcoated it with short of a pour-on bartop finish.

If you can switch to using varnish and that's what you decide to go ahead with, so that you know in advance it may a week or longer for its smell to dissipate. And varnishes need a good month to get to something like their final toughness.

 

[ED65]

oil takes a long time to fully cure, we're talking a few months, so if you were going to varnish it you'd have to wait a long time, unless it was danish oil...

FYI, varnish can be applied on top of uncured drying oil. This is heresy to some people but in fact it's the norm to do so because practically nobody, some luthiers being an exception, actually waits for oil to cure before they overcoat it.

Anyway, with oil-based varnish you don't have to wait: varnish applied on top will just meld with the oil in the wood surface, simple as that. It's not much different to blending the two things in advance to make a homemade Danish oil-type finish.

 

[SMALMALEKI]

Thank you for the replies and advices. I decided to leave with three coats of finishing oil.
The letters were glued using Titebond original and were clamped for four hours.
The finished article looks amazing.

 

[SMALMALEKI]

varnishing is like you are making it full proof .. after varnish you can even clean it with wet cloth .. varnish locks all the colur n designs from loosing.. i think you should apply two layers of varnish.
best regards!!

I am planning to do so in August holidays. Thought of giving it a time to be put to test. I will address any issues at the same time.