I'm working on my first piece of furniture. It's a bit different than shop cabinets and so I have a few questions.
It's a hall table, walnut base, curly maple top, white maple dovetailed drawers with walnut drawer face.
You can see what I have completed so far here:
http://uploads.mitechie.com/images/w...le_tut-013.jpg
So on the base my original plan was to go with 4-5 coats of tung oil. Thinning the first coat 50/50 as per the instructions. It's 100% tung oil from woodcraft. After reading it seems several people seal the tung oil, so is this regular? I've got some Arm-R-Seal I was thinking of putting down with a few coats. Is that ok for this type of project? I can't think it'll get much of a beating, but it's by a double wide door to the back deck and likely to get a lot of light.
Next up, the maple drawers. I wasn't going to finish the drawers originally, but with the dovetail parts I wanted to do something to help the end grain of the dovetail stand out. So I was wondering if there's a good method of finishing that won't cause the drawers to make everything in them smell or if I should just plan on doing some sort of oil finish to just the outside of the drawers?
Also, from reading it seems that white ample is subject to blotching. Should I shellac them first to prevent blotching? Thanks for any hints.
Hopefully I'm all set on the curly top. Between teh FWW article on "Popping the grain" and The Wood Whisperer podcast on the same I'm hoping I can pull that off.
Thanks a ton for the help.