I am starting to make some cherry cabinets for my kitchen. I previously made a night stand that was cherry finished with boiled linseed oil topped with shellac (if memory serves). I really liked the way the linseed made the cherry grain look and wanted to try to get a similar look in the kitchen.
Was wondering if people had recommendations on what to put on top of linseed oil for a kitchen situation or other specific recommendations of finishes that would have a similar appearence but enough durability.
Thanks in advance for any help. Brian
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The pro's and the cabinet shops will use highly engineered lacquer finishes. And they will be incredibly beautiful, and incredibly tough.
Unfortunately, tooling up to use their finishes can be very costly -- expensive sprayers, driven by expensive blowers.
I like your idea of using linseed oil. I even like th idea of following it with superblond shellac. And I would probably follow that with water-based poly.
It's probably the closest I'd be able to get, to that pro finish.
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Excellent advice from YesMaam,
Just make sure the shellac is dewaxwd, I don't know about water based poly (it may be just me, I had bad experiences with water based finishes) regular poly will work as well,
you don't need to put a thousand coats of it, you just want to seal and waterproof the shellac.C.
Agreed -- water based versus oil based is not an issue -- both leave a very durable film.
Note that some oil based finishes add an amber tone to your work -- just like linseed oil does. If doubling-up on the amber toning is a problem, use water-based. If you need the additional amber tones, use oil based.
Support our Troops. Bring them home. Now. And pray that at least some of the buildings in the green zone have flat roofs, with a stairway.
I don't like water based finishes but is just because I had one bad experience with my first attempt, about 18 years ago when they just came out, never touched the stuff since !
As they say: "Chat échaudé crains l'eau froide" (the scalded cat is affraid of cold water).C.
I, too, was a skeptic. Twenty years ago, waterbased anything was junk.
Tried some waterborne stuff here a couple of years ago, and found it to be good stuff.
It has its foibles, but the end result is good.
Support our Troops. Bring them home. Now. And pray that at least some of the buildings in the green zone have flat roofs, with a stairway.
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