{"id":1368,"date":"2022-04-10T13:15:01","date_gmt":"2022-04-10T20:15:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.woodworkerssource.com\/blog\/?p=1368"},"modified":"2022-10-10T16:54:42","modified_gmt":"2022-10-10T23:54:42","slug":"how-to-finish-quarter-sawn-white-oak-so-the-figure-pops","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.woodworkerssource.com\/blog\/woodworking-101\/tips-tricks\/how-to-finish-quarter-sawn-white-oak-so-the-figure-pops\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Finish Quarter Sawn White Oak For the Best Figure"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><div class=\"video-container\"><iframe src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/rrRlVXQiZZs\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen> width=\"800\" height=\"450\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/div><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_3451\" style=\"width: 290px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.woodworkerssource.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/quarter-sawn-white-oak-fini.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-3451\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3451\" class=\" wp-image-3451\" src=\"https:\/\/www.woodworkerssource.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/quarter-sawn-white-oak-fini-400x533.jpg\" alt=\"Quarter sawn white oak finish examples\" width=\"280\" height=\"373\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.woodworkerssource.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/quarter-sawn-white-oak-fini-400x533.jpg 400w, https:\/\/www.woodworkerssource.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/quarter-sawn-white-oak-fini-600x800.jpg 600w, https:\/\/www.woodworkerssource.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/quarter-sawn-white-oak-fini.jpg 900w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 280px) 100vw, 280px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-3451\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Whether you want a light, natural color or a dark color, there&#8217;s a way to make the figure really pop out. The raw quarter sawn white oak board on the left is compared to a dark mission finished piece and a piece finished with Danish oil.<\/p><\/div>\n<p><strong>Arguably, the best part of quarter sawn white oak is its surprising figure.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Before you finish your quarter sawn white oak projects, consider how to make that beautiful ray figure&nbsp;look its best.<\/p>\n<p>The good news is that you have several simple techniques that provide impressive results. It takes no special hard-to-master technique, or an arsenal of chemicals, or a new set of tools to add to your shop.&nbsp; In fact, you can get a popping finish without even stepping foot into a &#8220;real&#8221; woodworking shop.&nbsp; You could do this within the tight confines of a veranda of a New York City apartment if you had to.<\/p>\n<p>In this video we demonstrate 3 nice ways to finish quarter sawn white oak to get the best pop from the figure.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><em>(ALSO: See our selection of <a title=\"quarter sawn white oak lumber on sale\" href=\"https:\/\/www.woodworkerssource.com\/shop\/category\/quarter_sawn_white_oak.html\">quarter sawn white oak lumber<\/a>&nbsp;)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Since so many folks frequently want an easy finish that comes in &#8220;just one can&#8221; but will also provide a heck of a result, the secret budget-friendly answer is in a can of clear Danish oil.&nbsp; And all you have to do is apply it after your final sanding and before your top coat of choice &#8211; and the top coat is entirely optional.&nbsp; The reason is because Danish oil, such as by Deft, is a penetrating tung oil and urethane finish that&#8217;s highly effective at highlighting wood grain without obscuring it. Danish oil will seal the wood (in addition to adding depth to the grain) with a hard urethane once it&#8217;s dry.&nbsp; So you don&#8217;t necessarily have to use a shellac, lacquer, or varnish on top of it.&nbsp; Only if you want to. However, a top coat of lacquer or vanish is a good idea if you&#8217;re making a piece of furniture that needs the protection, or if you want to achieve a semi-gloss or gloss sheen that Danish oil doesn&#8217;t provide. Do both, and you&#8217;ll get both a bold <em>and<\/em> protective finish.<\/p>\n<p>But because wood finishing has so many methods and techniques, and because you&#8217;ll have your own personal tastes, we&#8217;ve made three different demonstrations in this video. And each one is vastly different to give you an idea of what you can do. Hopefully you&#8217;ll find that there&#8217;s a lot of solid information that you can replicate or build upon. These are the 3 processes you&#8217;ll see in the video:<\/p>\n<h3>1. A Clear Finish that Highlights The Figure<\/h3>\n<div id=\"attachment_3435\" style=\"width: 810px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3435\" class=\"size-large wp-image-3435\" src=\"https:\/\/www.woodworkerssource.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/02\/quater-sawn-oak-clear-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"Clear natural finish on quarter sawn white oak\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.woodworkerssource.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/02\/quater-sawn-oak-clear-800x600.jpg 800w, https:\/\/www.woodworkerssource.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/02\/quater-sawn-oak-clear-400x300.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-3435\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">When you want a clear or natural finish on quarter sawn white oak, beware. An application of varnish or lacquer or shellac might look nice at first, but there is a better way. The piece on the right was first finished with a coat of clear Danish oil, then it has 3 coats of sanding sealer and 3 coats of lacquer. The difference should be evident.<\/p><\/div>\n<h3>2. Staining Quarter Sawn White Oak to Accentuate the Figure<\/h3>\n<div id=\"attachment_3434\" style=\"width: 810px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3434\" class=\"size-large wp-image-3434 \" src=\"https:\/\/www.woodworkerssource.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/02\/quater-sawn-oak-stained-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"STAINED QUARTER SAWN WHITE OAK\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.woodworkerssource.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/02\/quater-sawn-oak-stained-800x600.jpg 800w, https:\/\/www.woodworkerssource.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/02\/quater-sawn-oak-stained-400x300.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-3434\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Two ways to stain quarter sawn white oak with an oil pigment stain: add it to a stainable grain filler (left), or apply it right to the wood and give it a scuff sand to remove color from the figure (right)<\/p><\/div>\n<h3>3. Creating a Dark Mission Style or Arts and Craft Style Finish<\/h3>\n<div id=\"attachment_3436\" style=\"width: 810px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3436\" class=\"size-large wp-image-3436\" src=\"https:\/\/www.woodworkerssource.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/02\/quater-sawn-oak-mission-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"mission style finish on quarter sawn white oak\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.woodworkerssource.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/02\/quater-sawn-oak-mission-800x600.jpg 800w, https:\/\/www.woodworkerssource.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/02\/quater-sawn-oak-mission-400x300.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-3436\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A mission style or arts and crafts style finish is pretty easy to achieve, if a little involved. But the results are impressive, and the colors you can produce are wide-ranging.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h3>What Do You Think of These Finishes on Quarter Sawn White Oak?<\/h3>\n<p>It should be very evident as to why you should go a step or two further than just a basic wipe on varnish or a similar one-step finish.&nbsp; You&#8217;re going to have a fantastic looking finished piece.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>All of the processes above are also top coated:<br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>3 coats of dewaxed shellac sanding sealer<\/li>\n<li>Sanded between each coat of sealer (220-grit)<\/li>\n<li>3 coats of spray lacquer<\/li>\n<li>Sanded between each coat (220-grit)<\/li>\n<li>Final coat is buffed with buffer&#8217;s polish<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>How ever you choose to finish your quarter sawn white oak project, finishing off the surface like this gets you a perfect glass-smooth surface, and you&#8217;ll be the envy of all your woodworking buddies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>width=&#8221;800&#8243; height=&#8221;450&#8243; frameborder=&#8221;0&#8243; allowfullscreen=&#8221;allowfullscreen&#8221;> Arguably, the best part of quarter sawn white oak is its surprising figure. Before you finish your quarter sawn white oak projects, consider how to make that beautiful ray figure&nbsp;look its best. The good news is that you have several simple techniques that provide impressive results. It takes no special hard-to-master <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.woodworkerssource.com\/blog\/woodworking-101\/tips-tricks\/how-to-finish-quarter-sawn-white-oak-so-the-figure-pops\/\">&#8230;<br \/><small><em><strong>Read More<\/strong><\/em> <i class=\"fa fa-arrow-circle-right\" aria-hidden=\"true\"><\/i><\/small><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3451,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[137,5,181,84],"tags":[70,61,85,73],"class_list":["post-1368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ask-us","category-tips-tricks","category-videos","category-wood-finishing","tag-demos","tag-finishing","tag-staining-and-dying","tag-tips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woodworkerssource.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woodworkerssource.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woodworkerssource.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woodworkerssource.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woodworkerssource.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1368"}],"version-history":[{"count":74,"href":"https:\/\/www.woodworkerssource.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1368\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8886,"href":"https:\/\/www.woodworkerssource.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1368\/revisions\/8886"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woodworkerssource.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woodworkerssource.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woodworkerssource.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woodworkerssource.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}