Brushing Lacquer

This is a very fast-drying finish, a comparatively recent product, made in a range of attractive colors. It has a cellulose base, and its quick drying feature makes it a little tricky to handle. It dries with a dull gloss finish-more glossy than regular paint but duller than enamel or varnish.

It is always advisable to start a lacquer job with a foundation coat of shellac. This acts as a filler on new wood, and on previously finished work it covers the old finish, which might have some unexpected chemical effect on the lacquer.

The technique of lacquering is to "flow" it on rather than to brush it as you would paint or enamel. There isn't time to brush it out smooth-it dries so quickly. Use plenty of it and let it flatten out of itself. Keep it going so that it won't dry before you go back for the next brushful, as all laps and brush marks will show. It is because of this that you are taking a big chance if you try to lacquer a big surface.

For thinning lacquer, cleaning your brushes, and removing the lacquer that somehow got on your hands, use only the thinner that is specially made for lacquer. Get a can of it when you get the lacquer. Neither turpentine nor alcohol will get you anywhere at all as a solvent for lacquer.

Oil Stain

Oil stain is used only on new wood, and is particularly effective on cypress, which comes up with an interestingly varied grain and figure. Oil stain is applied with a brush, and should be wiped dry with a soft cloth. It is made in various "wood colors" such as walnut, dark oak, light oak, mahogany, cherry and green. It dries with a dull finish, which may be brought up to a slightly smoother and more uniform effect with a rubbed application of wax.

Varnish stain is similar to oil stain, but is mixed with varnish instead of oil. It should be brushed on smoothly, but not wiped off with a cloth as with the oil stain. The varnish in it makes it dry with a glossy varnish finish.

Acid stain and wood dye penetrate the surface of hardwoods which will not take ordinary oil stains, and they dry with a dull finish. All dull stains may be made glossy by giving the job a coat of varnish or shellac after the stain is dry.

Shellac

Shellac comes "white" and "orange," the white being clear and nearly colorless and the orange a little thicker and of a brownish yellow color. Orange shellac, somewhat thinned out with alcohol, is the stuff you use for "antiquing" old maps and such.

Shellac may be used as a finish, but is not as durable as varnish. The main use for shellac is as a wood filler, to be applied before the finishing coat. It dries fast, so must be put on quickly with very little brushing.

Coating raw wood with shellac will raise the finer fibers of the wood, and it is necessary to smooth the surface with "oo" sandpaper before applying the final coat of shellac, paint, or other finish. The only solvent to use for shellac is denatured alcohol, which you use for cleaning brushes, or to thin the shellac if it gets too thick.

Shellac makes a fine base for enamel ("4-hour" enamel is the usual kind), and an equally fine base for paint. Over old paint, of course, no priming or undercoat is necessary, but it is very advisable to go all over the old paint with sandpaper to smooth off old brush marks or other unevenness.

Practically every set of directions you read on paint product cans stresses the importance of having the work clean, dry and free of grease-and this is just as important as the directions say it is.

A Few Other Finishes

Occasionally you may want a flat finish, one with no gloss at all, and for this, use ordinary "flat" paint. There is also a "semi-flat" paint which gives a surface that may be wiped off with a damp cloth, but the disadvantage of all flat paints is that they are difficult to keep clean.

Varnish may be used as a protecting coat (especially for outside work) or to give luster or gloss to a flat finish. Or it may be used alone where a glossy, colorless finish is wanted. Spar varnish should be used for all outside work, or for tops of cocktail tables, though here, of course, no applied finish in the world is as resistant to stain or discoloration as a glass or mirror top. Varnish is no commodity to shop for in quest of a cheap grade. Cheap varnishes are very likely to crack or discolor after they have been on for a short time.

An attractively lustrous finish, especially where you want to bring out grain is to be had with linseed oil and wax-if you don't mind being a little fussy. The mixture is half-and-half boiled linseed oil and stain, brushed on thin-no more than the wood will readily absorb. After allowing this to dry two or three days, rub on a good floor wax with a cotton cloth. The rubbing should be with a circular motion, and as the cloth dries apply more wax, and repeat until the finish comes up to just the degree of smooth luster you want.

Decoration

The decoration of furniture or anything else you make gets a little beyond the province of this book, and it's difficult to say much about, too, because of the varying skills, or lack of skills, of the individual.

There's not only the motif, be it plainly decorative or pictorial, but the technique needed for its execution. The colors you would use are, of course, regular artists' oil paints, such as they squeeze out on palettes, and the effect of these, either antiqued with orange shellac and varnished or just plain varnished, can be most intriguing.

Gold powders (with their accompanying banana-oil solvent) should be used very thick, and kept from their tendency to powder off after drying by being given a protecting coat of varnish. Certain gold decorations were suggested earlier for some "Chinese" pieces, so we have to mention gold powders.

There is a way of getting the "dusty gold" effect you may have noticed in Oriental lacquer work. Put a little (very little) dry gold powder on the corner of a card and blow it on the enamel or lacquer while enamel or lacquer is still wet.

One other trick worth knowing is how to do the old brown "antiquing" effect you may have noticed on decorated furniture. In manufactured furniture, or woodwork done by a professional decorator the faint tint of brown, blended out into a panel from a darker tint, in the corners, is sprayed on with a blower, but as you are going to do it by hand, you get yourself a tube of Vandyke brown and some small pieces of cheesecloth and a little turpentine in a tin-can lid. Painting a little of the brown in the corners, you then blend it out to nothing with the cheesecloth rags and a little turpentine, and after that is dry, a thin coat of orange shellac will give you a piece of "antiquing" that you will admire so that you will doubt if you really did it yourself.

It is particularly desirable to antique decorations in the nature of quaint old floral motifs, as antiquing blends, softens and harmonizes all the colors.

But at this point we have to stop talking about decoration or we'll get hopelessly involved, and find ourselves in the midst of quite another book. It might be called "It's Fun to Decorate Things" (and so it is)-but the next few pages, a portfolio of ideas, should incline the reader to turn resolutely to his saw and hammer, forgetting, for the moment, the lure of the paint brush.