Teri Masaschi’s book is based on her finishing experience acquired over many years while restoring antique furniture and building antique furniture reproductions, along with teaching finishing classes.
In the introduction to this book, Teri Masaschi writes that the fantastic array of finishing products on the market is what makes learning finishing somewhat complicated.
“In woodworking, if a router bit is an ogee-style bit, that’s it – very straightforward. But in finishing, a stain is not just a stain. It could be oil- or alcohol- or water-based, dye or pigment or both, gel or penetrating or glaze. Choosing among the alternatives is never just black or white; advantages come with disadvantages. Some who’ve struggled, call finishing a ‘black art.’”
To help the would-be finisher reading this book learn to control the outcome of his or her projects, Teri shares her experiences over 37 years of “falling into every pitfall and learning how to back out of them.”
Until recently, Teri ran a full-time business of furniture restoration and finishing for other woodworkers, along with teaching and writing. Now she only does her own work, which is cleaning up pieces to resell and fun building projects with antique components, such as industrial iron bases with aged and distressed tops. She also built a number of antique furniture reproductions over the years.
Choose a Finish First – at the Design Stage
In the “How to Use This Book” section, Teri outlines the direction the book will take: a “Getting Started” chapter with the basics, including planning, followed by chapters in the same sequence as finishing – preparing the surface, filling the holes, grain filling, coloring, topcoating, rubbing out, and repairing and touching up.
“The most important part of finishing starts at the very beginning of a project at the drafting table when the piece is being drawn and the cut list generated,” Teri writes at the beginning of Chapter 1. Then she offers a series of questions: What is the function of the piece? Will it need a super-durable topcoat? Will it have a special color to match? Will some parts need prefinishing? If the piece is built from random boards (not all from the same tree), what risks are there with color inconsistency? If there are sap streaks (white streaks), is it necessary to cut them out, plan around them, or plan on coloring them in? Is the piece going to be made from wood that is prone to “blotching”?
Answers to these questions. Teri says, will lead the finisher to the features that need to be considered when choosing a finish. Most considerations, she notes, relate either to function or appearance. She then gives the reader an in-depth look at how function and form determine an appropriate finish. Illustrations cover qualities of topcoats, dyes and pigments, binders and solvents for pigments and for dyes.
A Gallery of Finely Finished Furniture
To illustrate the different needs that function and appearance pose for the finisher, Teri includes a “Gallery Of Finely Finished Furniture” images with explanations of appropriate finishes. See one of the images and explanations below.
These three items, all replicas, have quite different needs.
The Eli Terry Pillar and Scroll Clock will receive minimal wear, so a shellac or wipe-on oil, rubbed out with wax, will do well.
The Pedestal Table is a target for drinks. Use a durable polyurethane, varnish, or lacquer on the top. The base can have a wipe-on finish to match the top.
The Windsor Chair may receive hard daily use, depending on the household. Use a traditional varnish, polyurethane, or eight to ten wipe-on coats of gel varnish or polyurethane.
(Photo from the Gallery of Finely Finished Furniture, courtesy of Teri Masaschi.)
Trio of Replicas
Test Sample, Finishing Plan, Tools, Brushes and Safety
After setting requirements for a finish for your project, Teri says you are ready to make a test sample – a step that is the “supreme law” of finishing that hardly anyone does. Teri warns that six months of hard work can be ruined in an hour with the wrong finish – a disaster that a test sample would likely have avoided.
She devotes an entire page to describing how to do an effective test sample. (See below; page image courtesy of Fox Chapel Publishing.)
After choosing a finishing schedule, Teri encourages writing it on the project drawings before you cut any wood. She then explains in detail what to include when recording the steps for surface prep and prefinishing, coloring, topcoating, rubbing out, and repair and touch-up.
Teri finishes Chapter 1 with important information about tools, brushes and their care, and safety – including the proper disposal of oily rags that she warns can ignite in as little as 15 to 20 minutes if left in a pile. She cites an instance where oily rags in a basement caused spontaneous combustion that burned down a house.
In the next three chapters, Teri methodically guides the reader/finisher in preparing wood and exploring all the possibilities for coloring it.
Getting Wood Ready
After showing step-by-step how to sand wood to remove planer marks and leave only sanding scratches too tiny to see, Teri offers detailed instructions for filling various types of holes, cracks and voids plus matching fillers.
Next she describes steps to control stain absorption in woods that are prone to “blotching” like pine, cherry, maple and sometimes birch. For open-grained woods such as walnut, ash, mahogany and rosewood, she explains the use of a filler, which she says is more effective than using finish as the filler.
Coloring Wood
In “Coloring Wood,” Teri offers a host of exercises to explore the wide variety of stains on the market and how to use them to achieve beautiful, creative results. Readers learn the differences between pigment and dye stains and how best to use them, plus some unusual applications for paint.
“Paint can be understood as a pigment stain with so much pigment that even a fairly thin coat will totally obscure the wood,” Teri writes. “If we thin down a paint so much that the pigment no longer totally obscures the wood, we will have a wood stain the color of the paint. How about a fire engine red stain on an oak picture frame for a clown picture in a kid’s room? There’s potential for some very exciting, very attractive, very happy results if done carefully in the right situation. And it can be a lot of fun!”
In what she labels “think outside the can,” Teri examines the use of glazes and color layering. According to Teri, glazes, usually applied to sealed surfaces, “add a subtle dimension of color to a surface or highlight carvings, moldings, or details, and they can add an antique look to a project.” Note: she says glazes never go on bare wood.
Tiger Maple Mirror with beveled glass. (Photo courtesy of Teri Masaschi.)
Three-Drawer Blanket Chest with Lift Top (Photo courtesy of Teri Masaschi.)
Teri’s replica of a Chippendale Tiger Maple Mirror in the Gallery of Finely Finished Furniture has a sophisticated color layering scheme of stains and glazes to emphasize the figured grain and to reproduce the old maple look of a real antique. The finish can be shellac, wipe-on finish, or even aerosol lacquers. The finish is also crackled, contributing to the appearance of antiquity.
Teri used an early 1800s method called vinegar putty paint for the Three-Drawer Blanket Chest with Lift Top that she built from wide pine boards and coffer pin hinges. It is featured in the “Painting Wood” section of “Topcoating.”
Teri incorporates lists of tools and materials needed for each exercise, step-by-step instructions and related photographs, plus Helpful Tips, as she explains the various aspects of finishing. (Page image courtesy of Fox Chapel Publishing)
Topcoating
In Chapter 5, Teri discusses topcoats that provide a protective shield on wood that keeps dirt, grime, water, and scuffing damage to a minimum. She includes exercises to help the reader/finisher become equipped to make good decisions by providing experience in all of the basic types of topcoats and two of the three application methods: bushing and wiping.
For readers who are eager to learn about spray finishing, Teri encourages them to find an instructor or a school that specializes in that type of finishing.
Topcoats are organized by application method and then by composition of the finish:
Brush-On Topcoats – oil-based urethane, water-based urethane, shellac, lacquer;
Wipe-On Topcoats – varnish, Danish oil, gel varnish.
Painting wood furniture seems like heresy to some woodworkers, Teri observes, but she says there are occasions when the wood is inferior, a client wants a certain look, or the style demands a painted surface. She offers instruction for using modern latex paint and milk paint for successful topcoating.
She also includes an exercise using milk paint for distressing, an effect often used for antique reproductions.
The final 10 pages of the Topcoating chapter provide instruction in successfully rubbing out finishes, which Teri says gives a whole project the look of a master’s touch. Rubbing out removes the subtle traces of the brush like the hand scraper removes the subtle traces of a perfectly honed and tuned plane, she writes.
“Even if you never go beyond brushing varnish on bare wood, learn to rub it out. You’ll be glad you did,” Teri writes. However, she notes that rubbing out it is not appropriate for a reproduction primitive piece.
Finishing Recipes
Teri shares her finishing recipes and invites the reader/finisher to expand on them to suit his or her own preferences. She suggests recording any revised recipes for future use and keeping them in a recipe box.
In “Frequently Used Recipes,” Teri includes recipes used for cherry, walnut, oak, mahogany, pine, and highly figured wood, plus “secret” wiping varnish recipes and mixing shellac from flakes. Abbreviated application instructions are included that she says assumes the finisher has familiarity with the techniques explained in earlier chapters.
A Gallery of Glorious Woods and Colors (see page at left) includes more test samples with ingredients but without application instructions. Teri says she intends these recipes to stimulate the imagination of more experienced finishers.
In addition to the colors shown here, in most cases two or three more recipes are given for each wood, and six in the case of the highly figured woods grouping.
The red oak image here is tinted with Golden oak Danish oil. Other red oak recipes include different stains that produce variations in color. The same goes for all the Glorious Woods pictured here.
Furniture Repair, Care and Restoration
Before guiding the reader/finisher through repair and touch-up instructions, Teri outlines directions for cleanup so the finish in question can be seen clearly and undisguised.
After addressing filling large and small holes, replacing color and over-finishing, and replacing finish, Teri includes six pages of detailed information about the care of furniture.
She writes in the second paragraph, “Popular ‘wisdom’ on the proper care for furniture finishes is full of advertising nonsense. To sort out the valuable information, we have to ask why we finish wood to begin with. There are three reasons:
“1-To make the wood beautiful
“2-To protect the wood from grime, grease, and everyday mess
“3-To minimize the expansion and contraction of the wood by providing a barrier against moisture from the environment.”
She then addresses in-depth what types of products and processes best meet these three needs. This section will be of value to everyone who has furniture they want to keep looking good, regardless of whether it is high-end quality or a beloved family piece.
Teri ends her book with a discussion of “Restoration and Conservation” that draws on her extensive background in not only restoring furniture but also building replicas of antique furniture. She offers helpful advice to people to determine whether to restore or conserve their antique furniture for optimum value.
She said Antiques Roadshow has made owners of antique furniture hesitant to touch their “attic jewels,” because they have heard the high prices that similar pieces bring and that sometimes refinishing can lower the price. Teri uses an educational process to counteract this fear, a process that sometimes involves an inspection or appraisal of the piece of furniture in question. During the appraisal, the parts of the piece are examined closely and questions asked about its history. “Once you do your homework, the answer will be obvious,” Teri writes.
Teri is surrounded by finishing products in this photo that appears on the back cover of Foolproof Wood Finishing: For Those Who Love to Build and Hate to Finish.
Fox Chapel Publishing published the book in 2006. This updated edition was published in 2014.
To learn more about Teri Masaschi, read Teri Masaschi: Finisher Extraordinaire and Much More!
