# Clear finish for wood?



## TaskBoy (Jan 17, 2009)

I need recs for a clear, satin-finish water base finish for natural pine interior doors. Thanks.


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## inspectorD (Jan 17, 2009)

First I recommend you apply a wood conditioner to set the wood. Pine is notorious for accepting stains and showing blotches where it soaks in more in one area. 
But for anything else, for an interior door, It really does not matter to much which product you use.  I have used varnethane, minwax or sikens.
I'm more concerned with the preparation and sanding then a tack cloth.


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## Daryl in Nanoose (Jan 17, 2009)

As the Inspector has said, prestain is a must of soft woods. I use Ben Moore Stay Clear poly on interior doors with great results and I sand between coats .
 I have also used Varethane with good results to.


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## TaskBoy (Jan 17, 2009)

Hi, thanks guys. I'm not staining just a clear coat. Do I still need that wood conditioner first?

Also: Does pine stay set the color it is when finished or will it keep darkening/yellowing? Those aren't bad things necessarily...

I ask because I have some older unfinished pine doors in the same room. I plan on finishing them too and was wondering if the new doors will "catch up" in color. If I try to sand the older doors to newer wood, I think they'll look weird as I won't be able to get into the deeper panel recesses. Thoughts?


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## inspectorD (Jan 17, 2009)

Yea ,you still need the preconditioner. And clean all surfaces before you stain with a tackcloth. The old doors will always look older, the new ones may catch up but it may take a few years. Don't try to stain the new ones to match the old, they end up in a few years becoming even darker than the old one.
The old wood has what is called patina. Everything gets that glow after a while.


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## AMZCabinets (Jan 21, 2009)

Varathane makes a great water based finish thats rock hard. Its their diamond polyurethane interior no. 2002 can be found at OSH. Ive had great success with it for projects that require long lasting durability. Hope this helps.


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## Wjmundle (Jun 9, 2009)

I have just finished clear coating 100 pieces of pine wainscotting.  I used "Varathane Crystal Clear Waterbourne Diamond Wood Finish".  I did not use a conditioner as I tried a bit of this first.  It worked perfect and comes with a Satin, Semi-Gloss or High-Gloss finsh.  I put on first coat, thin, after the second coat I did a light sanding and then a third coat.  It cleans up easy and does a perfect job.


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## Nestor_Kelebay (Jun 9, 2009)

I don't know if this is true for all Pine lumber, but Southern Yellow Pine (and all woods with a notable yellow or reddish colour like cedar, redwood, red oak yellow pine, etc.) are that way because they have a lot of "tannin" in them.

Tannin is brown in colour and is soluble in water.  As a result, people who use a latex primer and/or latex paint over such woods will often find a brownish stain on the primer or piant.  This is because the tannin in the wood will dissolve in the latex primer or piant and diffuse through the wet film thickness before the primer or paint dries.

In painting situations, the usual fix is to use an oil based primer to prime such woods first.  Since tannin doesn't dissolve in mineral spirits, tannin won't discolour an oil based primer.  However, I'm not sure how you would overcome this problem using a water based product, but I expect the are water based products or alcohol based clear coats that dry very rapidly that will allow you to establish a seal between the wood and any water based clear coat you apply.

Water based coatings like the Diamond Finish that was mentioned don't yellow with age the way oil based coatings do.  People often avoid using oil based coatings for that reason alone, but it's not always justified.

That's cuz yellowing of oil based coatings is generally misunderstood by most people.  Yellowing only occurs where there is little to no direct or indirect sunlight present.  Where you have direct or indirect sunlight, such as on a window sill, there will be no yellowing of oil based coatings because the sunlight will bleach the yellow out of the coating faster than it forms.  Also, the yellowing of oil based coatings is completely reversible.   Museums routinely expose old oil based paintings in their collection to indirect sunlight to bleach the yellowing out which occurs in storage.  They do this before putting the paintings on display so that they painting will look the same as it was painted; without a yellowish tint to it.  So, if you paint a chair with an oil based paint, and it yellows with age, you merely have to move the chair to a room with more natural sunlight, and in a few weeks the yellow discolouration will have vanished, and the chair will be the same colour it was when it was first painted.


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