How to make wood pop / Accentuate grain and Chatoyance with Water-Borne Finish

[Alan Lightstone]

OK. While my Waterlox is curing on my present project, I've set up my spraying booth and am attempting to duplicate the color and chatoyance that Waterlox adds to Sapele, but doing it with a water-borne finish, or with a water-borne topcoat.

My first choice for water-borne (since I have some on hand, and because I think I'll need a finish that burns in) is Target Coatings EM6000. Outside of some small pinhole bubbles (which others describe also with this), it seems very easy to spray. I haven't tried to rub out any of it. That will come after >100hr cure (per their fact sheet).

By itself, even with Amber TransTint added to it to aid in the color matching, the resulting finish is very lifeless. I think I could probably approximate the color, but the depth, grain structure, and chatoyance are absent.

My next approach will be to wipe on 2 coats of Waterlox S/F, then spray on a barrier coat of dewaxed shellac (I'll experiment with Super Blonde, Amber, and Garnet Shellacs), then top coat with the EM6000 to enable easy rubbing out.

OK guys. Please chime in. What other approaches can I use to get the look I am looking for? Boiled Linseed Oil first, Tung Oil first, shellac first, different top coats, etc.

I'll start posting some pictures later of the different samples. Hopefully this will prove to be instructive to all. I'm sure it will be to me.

[Prashun Patel]

I would first try an amber shellac as a base coat, followed by the Target (assuming compatibility). I've found shellac to give good depth and pop.

[Scott Holmes]

Amber shellac THAT HAS BEEN DEWAXED. Zinsser Amber HAS WAX!

I would use dewaxed garnet shellac. I would NOT add color to the EM6000; any heavier application areas, runs, drips etc. will show up in spades.

[Alan Lightstone]

How about heavier tint added to one or two coats of EM6000, then clear coats over that. Would that solve the non-homogeniety problem, or make it worse?

If not, how to get the wood the correct color?

I always use dewaxed flakes and mix my own shellac.

[John Coloccia]

I would recommend spraying 2 or 3 coats of 1# cut shellac, and then finish over that. You can add a touch of amber transtint to the shellac if you like. You can add it to the EM6000 too but you will find it's difficult to get the proper color because the 6000 is milky before it dries. I do all my coloring with shellac, actually. It takes transtint beautifully and sprays beautifully.

You shouldn't get any pinhole bubbles with the 6000. I never do, and I don't consider myself to be any great sprayer. Maybe you're putting it on too heavy or recoating too quickly? Possibly it's too warm/dry and you need some retarder.

Let the 6000 cure a bit more than 100 hours. 100 hours works, and I've leveled/buffed in that time period, but it still felt a little soft and I think the finish would be better if I let it go a couple more days. I would let it go a solid week.

The trick to even coloring is the lay the color down evenly...LOL. There's really no trick to it at all. Just a little practice. One thing, and maybe this is a trick, is to lay down a weaker color multiple times instead of a strong color once. Any little bobbles in your technique will tend to blend in much better. I do it all the time, though, and it's not hard to get an even coloration with a bit of practice on scrap.

edit: oh, the other trick, and this really is a trick, is to spray color WITH the grain, not across. Any minor variation, especially where passes overlap, will tend to blend in with the grain as opposed to stripes across the grain.

[sheldon pettit]

Nitrocellulose lacquers are perfect solutions, which means the coating is completely
soluble in the vehicle (or the solvents). Water-based wood finishes are mostly emulsions.
Though there are or were some water-based finishes
supplied in a solution form (totally clear in wet state, as opposed to milky in color), they
have/had abysmal water resistance; they are/were water soluble even after they cured.

In a dried nitrocellulose finish, the light passes through the finish - all the way to the
wood grain or stain at 90-degree angle, or straight down. With a water-based finish, the
light reflects at a 60-degree angle and doesn’t reach the wood grain or stain. Fixing this
difference is possible, and is being worked on year by year as to improvements.

So what does this mean at present? Any aqueous emulsion coating you buy or use
that is milky in appearence will never give you the features found in a perfect resin solvent solution
such as lacquer/shellac/solvent acrylic/polyurethane/varnish/or other non aqueous/emulsion coatings.

[Alan Lightstone]

True, and even though I have an explosion-proof fan on order (mostly to improve air flow through my spraying booth, but also for safety), I'm not sure I'll be able to safely spray NC lacquer in my garage workshop.

[Alan Lightstone]

You shouldn't get any pinhole bubbles with the 6000. I never do, and I don't consider myself to be any great sprayer. Maybe you're putting it on too heavy or recoating too quickly? Possibly it's too warm/dry and you need some retarder.

Let the 6000 cure a bit more than 100 hours. 100 hours works, and I've leveled/buffed in that time period, but it still felt a little soft and I think the finish would be better if I let it go a couple more days. I would let it go a solid week.

On most coats I don't get the tiny bubbles. When you go to Target Coatings website and visit their Finishing Forum, I'm not the only one with this issue. Interestingly, when I spray and obtain a 1 mil wet coat, I never get bubbles. When I go to a 3 mil wet coat, they start to appear.

It is very humid and pretty hot down here now. I haven't tried adding the retarder yet.

Thanks for the hint on waiting a week, instead of 100 hours. Still better than the full month with Waterlox.

I'm still a total newbie with spray finishing also.

[John Coloccia]

I think you're seeing "solvent pop". The water (or whatever solvent/carrier) gets trapped underneath a skin of finish....or you recoat too quickly and essentially do the same thing by trapping finish. Eventually, the little bubble you made pops and it looks like little bubbles or craters. I think this is what you're seeing.

3 mils isn't too heavy but maybe for your conditions it is. Either add some retarder, or spray lighter coats. Part of the beauty of this particular finish is that you can recoat in as little as 20 minutes. It also flows out beautifully, though the first 5 minutes looks like an orange peel mess!

edit: you know, that Fuji is pumping out relatively warm air. That will contribute too. Anything that makes the finish want to evaporate quickly and skin over (essentially) contributes.

[sheldon pettit]

True, and even though I have an explosion-proof fan on order (mostly to improve air flow through my spraying booth, but also for safety), I'm not sure I'll be able to safely spray NC lacquer in my garage workshop.

LOL, i didn't mean for you to use lacquer Alan, i was only using lacquer as an example. Any totally clear finish be it nitro/urethane/shellac/etc. can get you where you'd like to go better than any emulsion finish will.

[John Coloccia]

That's actually why I'm switching back to solvent based, Sheldon. Shellac underneath helps wake up the wood a great deal, but I still feel like it's missing something and it's bothering me that I can't achieve it.

[sheldon pettit]

That's actually why I'm switching back to solvent based, Sheldon. Shellac underneath helps wake up the wood a great deal, but I still feel like it's missing something and it's bothering me that I can't achieve it.

A good coat of tung oil will help with that John, The refractive index of tung is higher than BLO, and shellac also. thus giving you mre depth perception than shellac alone.

[Alan Lightstone]

A good coat of tung oil will help with that John, The refractive index of tung is higher than BLO, and shellac also. thus giving you mre depth perception than shellac alone.

I was planning on trying a coating of Tung Oil, sealed with shellac, then EM6000 as one of my experiments. How long to I have to wait for the Tung Oil to dry before spraying on shellac?

[sheldon pettit]

I was planning on trying a coating of Tung Oil, sealed with shellac, then EM6000 as one of my experiments. How long to I have to wait for the Tung Oil to dry before spraying on shellac?

Alan it is best if you wait several days or more before further coating ok, when it feels dry to the touch when rubbing , [non-oily], then it is safe to spray without repercussions. Since your only running test at this point, then yes, for sure run one sample with shellac and tung and the other with the 6000 over it - i think you will readily see that the shellac and oil give a better visual look than the one with the 6000 top coat.

[Jim Becker]

I personally use BLO followed by de-waxed shellac for figure accentuation. That's all followed by several coats of EM6000. For certain woods, such as tiger maple, I'll use dye first to darken the more porous wood, sand it back to further accentuate (repeating if necessary) and then do the oil, shellac and top coat to finish it off, as it were.