Polishing Wood Furniture with Steel Wool

Video Transcript

"Alright. We've got it all sanded down with our wet and dry. We've used our mineral spirits to lubricate it. We've got this kind of sludge left over. We just want to wipe that off. It's starting to get real smooth feel, slick and that's what we want. There's a few little slick areas in here. I don't know if you can pick them up or not. But, we want to take care of those now. And, the way we do that is with 40 steel wool. We're going to hand rub that and smooth that out even more. If you look under a microscope, you're basically taking off a very thin film now with the steel wool. What that does again, it gives us much smoother surface. This is part of what you heard of the hand rub finish. A lot of cheaper furniture companies won't go to this extreme and rubbing out furniture. And, there in lies the quality and also the color, the texture, the depth. It's just a shortcut if you don't do it. And, you get a whole different effect when you do. And, that's why good furniture costs more. Because, people go to this extreme. Imagine this was a dining room table, how much rubbing I would have to do. And, you kind of get the feeling of what I'm talking about. Alright, now we've got that pretty much one even sheen all the way across the surface. Everything looks about the same. The texture is good. The color is good. So, that's the cleaning and the steel wool process."