My interest in wood finishes and overall preservation has grown and deserves a second episode. I guess this is what happens to a retired mind with free time. I latch onto a new interest, and I have the opportunity to dig deep and then torture you with it because writing helps me learn.
I bought a few thick Wood Finishing books and I’ve been to the hardware store. I purchased a small sampling of just about everything,  shellac, boiled linseed oil, lacquer, polyurethane, tung oil, teak oil, Danish oil, mineral oil, mineral spirits, lacquer thinner, acetone, denatured alcohol, a few stains, lots of sandpaper, and a cabinet scraper, which I’d never heard of before now.
My friend Bud, a woodworker, was cleaning his garage and gave me a stack of various wood remnants in red oak, cherry, walnut, teak, and redwood. Chad, my son-in-law, gifted me a five-foot slab of heart redwood two weeks ago. It’s set up in my garage to become a coffee table.
I’m good to go with raw materials. Garage music and wifi connections are in place. What are my goals and objectives?
One goal is to muster courage through experience and restore some of our older furniture. Our dining room table has rings and scratches. End tables and oak cabinets have lost luster. A few wooden chairs need leg repair from doggie gnaw marks. Oak doors need a rubdown.
A more distant goal is to graduate beyond wood finishes and try my hand at woodworking. One day I would like to build my own personal oversized, massively sturdy, oddly accessorized, highly comfortable, too-hard-to-lift, backyard four-season chair. I would also like to one day build an oversized, extra-long, massively sturdy, wide-body picnic table and stools out of header beams that can survive outside in the backyard of our little Tahoe cabin.
As a former teacher, I’m a fan of sensory learning. I read the material – visual. I write copious notes – motor. I am surrounded by the well-ventilated aromas of woods and oils – olfactory. I watch and listen to training videos and read my notes aloud and annoy anyone who comes near with verbal explanations – auditory. Now, it is hoped, my finished projects will have taste.
Stuff I’m learning: I ordered huge jugs of epoxy resin and sanded down Chad’s redwood slab. I was about to begin the pouring process when I read the directions. Well, well. To paraphrase: Do not even consider applying this epoxy resin unless the temperature is going to stay over 75 degrees for 72 hours. Yoiks. Springtime in Benicia. I checked the current daytime temperature: high of 61 degrees.
OK. Plan B. I flipped it over to apply polyurethane to the bottom. A couple of coats should do just fine. Then I read the directions. For a super boffo gleaming masterpiece, I should apply eight coats of polyurethane letting each layer dry and sand in between. Cure times can be up to 72 hours. That’s about 24 days of repetitive brevity and wasted time. Or I could skip the sanding and cure times if I applied a new coat every four hours. I’d have to stay awake for 32 hours or set an alarm.
I dug deep into the dark web to learn alternatives. How to apply epoxy in Benicia weather? One forward thinking fellow suggested I use an electric hot-oil space heater and build a tent for my curing tabletop out of cardboard and duct tape. The tent holds in the heat and has the added benefit of keeping dust particles and gnats from landing in the tacky epoxy.
OK. Fine. I may be able to do the tabletop now, but I still needed to preserve the underside. Epoxy is too pricy and messy to apply to the bottom. Polyurethane is fine, and a couple coats are fine, but I liked the idea of laying down eight coats. I wanted to see that look, but I didn’t want to do that work.
Oh, dark web of mystery, what alternatives exist. One enterprising boat builder gave me a suggestion. One layer of epoxy is about equivalent to three layers of poly. He put down two coats of epoxy and topped it with two coats of poly, tantamount to eight layers.
So, I’m trying that. So far, so good. I finished the second coat of epoxy.
Thanks to Gino, my craftsman buddy from Philly, my garage cabinets are all beautiful oak and cherry wood. When he remodeled kitchens around town, he brought home the removed cabinets.
I have 14 hardwood cabinet doors that I can experiment on. I intend to try something different on each one of them. Right now I’m trying Wipe-On Poly for the first time. It’s just thinned out polyurethane in a can, but it claims to add an easy sheen. I cleaned off two doors with my new cabinet scraper, basically a rectangular piece of metal like a big credit card. Scrape it across the wood surface and the old finish comes right off. After scraping, sanding, and cleaning with acetone, I applied the Wipe-On Poly. The first time, I left streaks with my application rag. I watched a couple more videos, sanded them down, and applied again in long uninterrupted strokes. They look so nice, I put Wipe-On Poly on all my door frames.
More later.

Steve Gibbs is a retired Benicia High School teacher who has written a column for The Herald since 1985.

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