How to Apply Varnish

Video Transcript

"I'm Jeremiah Fox, I'm a carpenter and handyman out here in New York City. How to apply varnish. Once you have a woodworking project towards the completion phase, you want to protect it from the environment. To do that you want to put a coat of something between it and the world that's going to be all around it. You can use varnish and there's several types of varnish. We are using a water-based polyurethane. There's also oil-based varnishes which dry a little bit faster, have some positives to them but also tend to smell a lot longer of the varnish scent so if you're doing a project in the house you're going to be smelling that project for weeks and weeks and weeks whereas polyurethane goes a little bit faster. Cleanup is also easier with the water-based because you can do it in your own sink whereas oil-based you need to use mineral spirits or a paint thinner. Now once you have your project prepared to that stage you want to make sure that it's nice and clean and smooth. So if you need to, come in with a piece of sandpaper. So you want to sand out any imperfections that are left, any little marks because once you varnish it you can't really do over. And once you get it to a nice smooth surface that you like, take a good paintbrush and your varnish or urethane or acrylic or whatever you're using. Now you don't want to dump a ton of this stuff all on at once because it will set. So what I like to do is get a little bit in there, dab it on and then strip. Now you want to work with the grain with this. That helps make sure it gets in to all the pores. And you fight against bubbles as much as you can. But as long as you work it in there, nice long strokes toward the end, you can start with short choppy stuff then you want to come back and give it nice, smooth strokes and that way you won't have as many choppy lines. Now most varnish will smooth itself out and there are additives you can dump into them to help with that so that will take even the fine lines we have here from the brush and they will vanish once it sets up and dries. And then your project is protected."