Understanding Wood Finishing: How to Select and Apply the Right Finish (Fox Chapel Publishing) Practical & Comprehensive with Over 300 Color Photos and 40 Reference Tables & Troubleshooting Guides
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Understanding Wood Finishing: How to Select and Apply the Right Finish (Fox Chapel Publishing) Practical & Comprehensive with Over 300 Color Photos and 40 Reference Tables & Troubleshooting Guides Details
From the Back Cover Take the Mystery out of Wood Finishing For more than 18 years, Bob Flexner has been inspiring woodworkers with his writings and teachings on wood finishing. Now, from this best-selling author comes the long-awaited and completely updated second edition of Understanding Wood Finishing—the most practical, comprehensive book on finishing ever published. The first edition of Understanding Wood Finishing has sold hundreds of thousands of copies and is widely regarded as the bible of wood finishing. "We use Understanding Wood Finishing as the textbook for our students training to go into the furniture industry," says David Miles, wood technology professor at Pittsburg State University. "It's the best written, most accurate, and most thorough wood finishing book in print—by far." Inside you will find: The latest technical updates on materials and techniques—from spray guns to French polishing Detailed instructions and explanations that take the mystery out of the science More than 300 color photos that help you distinguish between products, make decisions, and solve problems More than 40 must-have reference tables and troubleshooting guides ...and much more. With its clear writing and engaging style, this is "without a doubt the best researched, most authoritative, and easy-to-follow book on the subject," notes Steve Shanesy, Popular Woodworking magazine editor. As professional finishers know and as amateurs will surely realize, "finishing is easy once you know what you are doing," says Frank Klausz, a professional cabinetmaker. "Understanding Wood Finishing makes the science of finishing understandable." ABOUT THE AUTHORBefore beginning his writing and teaching career, Bob Flexner spent 20 years running a woodworking and restoration shop. In addition to writing the first edition of Understanding Wood Finishing, Bob has made two award-winning videos, hosted The Furniture Workshop, his own call-in radio show, and taught several hundred workshops and seminars. In addition, he has written more than 300 articles and edited the leading magazine dedicated to the professional furniture-restoration trade. Read more About the Author Before beginning his writing and teaching career, Bob Flexner spent 20 years running a woodworking and restoration shop. In addition to writing the first edition of Understanding Wood Finishing, Bob has made two award-winning videos, hosted The Furniture Workshop, his own call-in radio show, and taught several hundred workshops and seminars. In addition, he has written more than 300 articles and edited the leading magazine dedicated to the professional furniture-restoration trade. Read more
Reviews
This seems like an excellent book on finishing wood, but being a relative newcomer to this topic, I felt like this book lacked enough detail on precisely when you should use each technique or each combination of techniques that he covers. I also would like to have seen more detailed, step-by-step instructions to guide absolute beginners in making logical finish choices, as well as which finish combinations work best in example situations, and how to apply those finishes best. After reading the book three times, I feel like my understanding of those sorts of details is still lacking. In other words, I don't think I have enough understanding to make the correct choices for each finishing situation. I feel like I would be mostly guessing what I should use. That's why I took one star away.For example, there is a table outlining the potential benefits of each finish type which seems to show that shellac has excellent attributes in nearly every desirable category except for complete wood protection, It is also non-toxic and has no dangerous fumes. For an indoor object which is mostly decorative and rarely handled, it sounds like shellac would be the best finish for me to use, particularly with my perpetual sinus problems. Yet, he seems to go into more detail about using every finish except shellac in this book. In fact, I'm still not clear on whether shellac would be best used in the tinting process or the protection process, much less how to include it in a finishing project.Here is another example of what I mean by lack of detail for beginners. In several parts of the book, he seems to say that tinting the wood is a separate step from applying a protective finish, but I didn't see examples of which tinting methods work best with each protection method. In fact, a couple of passages of the book seem to say that you do a sealing pass before tinting or the final protective finish. In the rest of the book, this sealing process is omitted. I must admit, this confused me even more. I would like to have seen beginner-level instructions for choosing and then applying each of the combinations as well as a single, definitive list depicting the chronological order. I don't know whether I'm supposed to seal, then tint, then protect the finish or tint first, then seal, then protect. Perhaps I'm only supposed to seal in very specific situations. Maybe protecting the finish is the same thing as sealing. I'm just not sure.Overall, I feel like my theoretical knowledge base of general information about wood finishing has expanded greatly. But from a purely-practical beginners viewpoint, I still don't know what I'm supposed to do. I wish there were more detailed step-by-step instructions with photos showing the precise steps and sequence for applying each finish combination on a scrap piece of wood for beginners. Basically, I'm talking about sample projects similar to those found in other tutorial-type works where the "how and why" are clearly demonstrated. Giving a link to matching tutorial videos online would be even better.I still feel like this is a great book to have, but it may not be enough for absolute beginners.
