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I recently had to finish ten panel doors for a kitchen cabinet job. First I applied two coats of oil which I wiped off. Blowing out excess oil from the crevices where the panels sit in the rails and stiles with compressed air worked well. But when it came time to varnish, I had problems. When I broke the panels loose after the varnish had hardened, I found blobs of gummy wet varnish that had crept into the crevices. This took a long time to clean up and had to be done after every coat.
I have more kitchen jobs coming up and I would like to dial in an efficient way to finish panel doors. I’m thinking of using a wiping technique with the varnish so that I could blow out the crevices, but I wonder if a durable film could be built up in a reasonable number of coats.
Advice from anyone with experience dealing with this dilemma would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.
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Jeff, Can you pre-finish the panels prior to assembly? It's the best way that I know of, but if the doors are supplied pre-assembled,...........? Slainte, RJ.
*Thanks, Yes actually, I did prefinish the panels with oil so they will be less likely to absorb glue and stick permanently in their frames during assembly. But I still had to varnish the frames eventually, and it seemed like it would be pretty tedious to try and not have any drips or excess getting into the grooves, so I just varnished the frames and panels at once.I should probably also mention that I don't have a spraying set up. Would this drastically improve my results?
*Jeff, In your situation my preferred method of work- but more time consuming, and costly to the customer- would be to stain and polish the panel completely before assembly, as before. At the same time stain and completely finish the inside moulding either side of the panel groove. After assembly, flush off the front and back face of the rail(s) and stiles along the length and at the intersections. Then stain and polish the faces and the outside edge. Most- but not all, mouldings feature a sharp break where they meet the face. Using a brush would mean cutting off carefully where the moulding starts. If you spray you would need to mask off appropriately at different stages. Slainte, RJ.
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