Hand-Rubbing Clear-Coat Wood Finish

Video Transcript

"In this clip we're going to talk about rubbing out a clear-coat finish on stained wood. Here we have two very different finishes on one piece of clear-coated birch plywood. As you can see this end has got a sheen to it, a low luster, whereas this side is very flat. It's a very non-glossy surface. You can see the line of demarcation. Basically, what I did is, once the clear-coat had dried completely, I gave it a about twenty-fours hours to cure. I started sanding it. I sanded down all the brush marks and all the bubbles that happened to be the surface imperfections in wood. I sanded them down. I started with a piece of 120 grit, and sanded the entire piece, built my way up, I went from 120 to 220, sanded the whole thing again, and kept doing that until I worked my way up to 400, which is a very fine fine grade of sandpaper. And what happened was I end up with a very smooth surface. Which then on this end, I took a clean dry cloth and some polishing compound and rubbed it into the surface. Just use a little elbow grease, and basically buffed the surface out. And what that does is you get a very very smooth uniform surface without any marks, any brush marks or swirl marks or anything and the hand-rubbed surfaces are very rich, very desirable surfaces, free of defects and it takes a lot of extra work, but I think in the long run, you'll find it to be worth it. And if you're anything like me, working on wood-working projects such as this is such a good time. So that's really the key to everything, just make sure you're having a good time."