table shine

wildewood · 28 Nov 2018

hi all

I have a large piece of beautiful Elm which i'm finishing i want to keep the 'just oiled' shine & lustre'
without varnishing which i can not do without dust getting on the surface before it dries.
any oils, waxes or ecommendations please?
cheers WW

ED65 · 29 Nov 2018

If you want that look and that amount of gloss WW I think the ideal way is to use varnish.

wildewood":2nsmwlkh said:
...without varnishing which i can not do without dust getting on the surface before it dries.

Good news, you can. Any oil-based varnish can be diluted to turn it into what's called wiping varnish (which you can wipe on but it doesn't have to be applied that way) and here's the key bit, wipe off the excess.

It builds up much slower when used in this way but it's very user-friendly in a number of ways, including if you have a dust problem. Because there's so little varnish left on the surface the dust can barely stick in place, certainly nothing you can't remove with one or two swipes of fine abrasive paper, steel wool or the synthetic equivalent. You can even use the rough side of brown paper to de-nib!

There are other finishes that can give really great gloss, including shellac and lacquer, but doing it with varnish is arguably the easiest and although not the fastest most of the time it takes is hands-off waiting time. You can also do this with polymerised tung oil but in addition to not being cheap (understatement) it's the slowest option of these, and then isn't as durable as varnish which is cheap.