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Furniture Finishing

This is reduced to milk consistency with benzene or naphtha, sprayed, brushed or dipped on, and wiped smooth while part dry with a leather pad, or allowed to dry hard naturally in twenty-four hours, or force dried overnight at 110°120° F., or oven baked at 200° F. for two or three hours (if possible allowing to cool in oven), then sanded with medium fine paper. Pieces with bad dents should be rejected or knife-filled with glazing putty, sanded smooth when dry.

PRIMER AND GROUND COAT

Metal primer, ordinarily the first coat, is applied by spraying, brushing or dipping, reduced usually about five parts to one of naphtha for dipping, six parts to one for spraying, and as received for brushing—the important thing is complete coverage. It is then baked hard at 160°-250° F. for two to five hours, depending on color and type of heat, gas, oil, electricity or steam, and whether direct or indirect. When this has been lightly sanded and dusted, a coat of ground color is applied, reduced the same as the primer and baked on an average at 230° F. for three hours. The materials being so similar, this coat is often applied directly on the metal, omitting the primer.

The color is carefully chosen to provide the proper background for the wood being imitated, mahogany, walnut or oak.

BRUSH GRAINING

The work is now ready to be grained, if by brush using japan colors for small work, oil colors for larger work, or preferably, specially prepared graining color, or ink as it is sometimes known. All are thinned to glaze consistency with turpentine and a small amount of boiled oil and are dried overnight or baked about an hour at 200° F. Mahogany and oak ground color are first stippled with drop black in japan or distemper to imitate the black pores; Van Dyke brown or burnt sienna for walnut. Patent rubber rollers may also be used. When this is dry the mahogany graining color is brushed on and graining is started at once, putting in the grain with a flat fitch brush, varying the pressure to show light and dark effects and blending out softly with a clean rag or a badger-hair blender. While proficiency in hand graining only comes with long practice, a start can be made by working beside a finished block of the wood to be imitated, noting the wavy lines of mahogany, the wavier lines of walnut and the V-shaped, yet wavier, lines of oak.