Why we Prefer to use a Clear Lacquer Finish over a Wood Stain

 When David began working on our small business full time in Ontario January 2021, he did not have much experience finishing wood products. Believe it!

When he started woodworking in 2018, he built solid wood dining tables for a retailer in Vancouver called Once a Tree and would deliver unfinished tables to their warehouse for the company to finish before they added it to their showroom.

David has plenty of experience finishing our kitchenware and food-safe products with simple mineral oil and beeswax but he found himself at a point in the business where he needed to "level up" his finishing techniques. David was then making more and more large furniture pieces that required a durable top coat that would protect the wood for decades to come.

And what does David do when he needs to learn something? Like all good millennials, he took to Google and YouTube for answers! David does endless research and continues to refine and develop his preferred finishing technique on every new product he builds. He has learned a lot to say the very least.

He's actually experimented with several different brands of polyurethane and lacquer […but that’s a whole other story and blog post!] and we’re currently using a clear durable lacquer by Watco as it dries quick which allows you to do several coats over less time, and it does not produce that stinky smell for days the way a poly finish does. David has made it very clear that this is not his favorite lacquer option however because of the short supply of resources due to COVID19, this is what is available to us at this time. David’s goal for Q3/2021 is to perfect his finishing technique and in doing so has created so many amazing by-products from his scrap woods on hand. For example, the exotic chessboards are now finished with this lacquer but were originally finished with a spray can lacquer which ended up becoming tacky and adhering to the rubber feet of the board next to it on our storage shelves in the office. This was an odd reaction we did not expect so David committed to sanding off the finish of all 5 of them and re-finishing them with this quick drying lacquer instead.

Side Bar: Many people do not realize that after a product is finished and sprayed, it will need to sit and “cure” [which is a fancy way of saying the finish will harden over time to become more durable] for 7-14 days. Each stain, paint, poly, lacquer and finish has it’s own curing/drying time.

We’ve been having great success with the lacquer we are using now, and we find ourselves naturally evolving to resist the urge to get into staining. Clients will email us with inspiration photos and sample designs picturing what looks like a cedar wood top stained a dark chocolate tone to look like walnut hardwood with a farmhouse style base painted black matte. This is where Davids knowledge and understanding as a woodworker plays a dramatic part in recommending options to our clients that fit their budget.

David would then present the client with 2 build options:

1) as per the inspiration photo and construct

2) suggest using a natural toned wood species that is similar to the inspiration colours but embellishing the natural wood grain, and applying a simple clear lacquer finish for protection. For instance, for that farmhouse table I mentioned earlier, David would suggest a 2” solid walnut hardwood top, sapwood removed, and a solid pine wood base sprayed matte black to add a luxurious element to a simple base with an upgraded table top in a premium hardwood.

This is how we work with our clients to accommodate their budget. David can handcraft a $10,000 custom dining table all day long but because he knows so much about different species of hardwoods and their properties, he is happy to discuss alternative design and style options that suit your budget as well.

Admittedly, we do try to sway our clients to drop the stain and simply let us help them choose a gorgeous natural premium hardwood that will bring the same colour tones to their space while embellishing the natural beauty within. It’s also better for your budget to drop the stain and just go for a clear topcoat! Professional finishing can cost upwards of $1,500 per project so at this point in our evolution as we are still learning as well, we offer it as part of your custom build.

Staining is more often than not, unpredictable and way more time consuming because each species of wood absorbs stain differently and within that species, the tree might absorb stain differently in different areas of the tree which can result in the table looking blotchy or uneven. It’s also almost near impossible to correct if you’ve made a mistake – you’ll be looking at sanding it all off and re-doing it! It’s important to remember that hardwood is a live material even after it’s been milled and consists of millions of little pores which “drink” in liquids per se. If you stain wood, you will also need to seal it with a topcoat so the wood doesn’t warp or bow which it naturally does over time. Proper commercial grade Sawmills will have an area where they Kiln Dry their hardwoods which allows them to dry out quicker than storing the wood somewhere to air-dry for 2-5 years.

We source our woods from the Wood Shed in Smithville Ontario which has a massive selection and storage facility for their domestic and exotic hardwoods. David is a kid in a candy store there!

We hope you learned something from this blog post, thanks for reading and please leave any questions or comments you have below.