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Step 1
Before you start to varnish, lie out enough paper or newspaper so that you won't get any varnish on your floor. Be sure to have a cloth handy to clean up any mess made.
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Step 2
Before you begin to varnish the wood surface, you should clean your brush thoroughly to make sure there's nothing in it that will end up varnished onto your wood. Be sure to let it dry completely before use.
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Step 3
Before you begin, you should first decide the direction and order of how you're going to varnish the wood. This is mostly important if you're varnishing a wooden surface with awkward angles and pieces.
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Step 4
When you begin to varnish, stroke across the grain of the wood in long strokes. When you go to varnish from where you left off, do a 1.5 inch overlap so that there's no patches in the end.
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Step 5
After you have covered the entire surface, you want to varnish another layer. This time, you want to varnish working with the grain. This time though you should be cautious to avoid using a lot of varnish, you want this to be a very thin layer so your end results are smooth.
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Step 6
After this you should take a dry brush using the tip to work with the grain to simply smooth out the surface.
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Step 7
Most people like to do a second coat, if you do decide to do a second coat you need to wait at least 24 hours before doing the second coat. You may want to use sandpaper to gently work with the grain to remove part of the first coat. This will make it so that the surface isn't perfectly smooth, so that a second layer of varnish will hold. Be sure to use the cloth to clean off any debris.
