Reddit reviews 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

Flexner's book is the go-to that I know of - https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Wood-Finishing-Comprehensive-Troubleshooting/dp/1565235665

Step 1 is to make a concrete identification of the finish.

Put a few drops of denatured alcohol on the finish. If it softens immediately, it's shellac. If not, move to toluene or xylene. If that works, it's a water-base finish. If that doesn't work, try lacquer thinner. If that works and the other two didn't, it's lacquer.
If none of them work, it is a reactive finish of some sort.

Once you know exactly what the finish is, you can find out exactly how to solve the problem. This is important because if you don't completely strip the finish and start fresh, it's not generally a good idea to layer different finishes since they don't bond properly. Your ultimate path is going to be to clean it up with a solvent/thinner, sand it smooth, and reapply, you just need to know what the finish is to pick the right products.

FYI, these steps come directly from Bob Flexner's bible on the subject, Understanding Wood Finishing.

If you're interested in pursuing woodworking after you solve this problem, it's an invaluable resource.

First off, I always recommend "Understanding Wood Finishing" by Bob Flexner. It's pretty simple straightforward advice and it's only $15. https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Wood-Finishing-Comprehensive-Troubleshooting/dp/1565235665

Here's what he recommends:

>WALNUT
>
>Walnut is America's supreme native furniture hardwood. It is a hard, durable wood with a beautiful figure and rich, dark coloring. It has a smooth, medium-porous texture that accepts all stains evenly, and it finishes nicely with any finish. The coloring of air-dried walnut heartwood is a warm, rust red. The coloring of kiln-dried heartwood, which is commonly steamed to reduce heartwood and sapwood color variations, has a colder charcoal gray cast. As steamed walnut ages, the gray warms to a tan with a slight reddish tint. The reddish tint in aged walnut makes it difficult to distinguish from mahogany in old furniture.
>
>There are two finishing problems presented by walnut: the color contrast between the dark heartwood and the almost-white sapwood, and the coolness of steamed walnut.
>
>There are four ways to overcome the color contrast between heartwood and sapwood:
>
>• Cut off all the sapwood so you're using only heartwood.
>
>• Arrange your boards so you use the color differences to decorative advantage.
>
>• Bleach the wood to a uniform off-white color and then stain it back to whatever color you want. (See "Bleaching Wood" on page 80.)
>
>• Stain the sapwood to the color of the heartwood with a dye stain, and then stain the whole to the color you want.
>
>Woodworkers making one-of-a-kind furniture usually choose one of the first two methods: They cut away the sapwood or they use it decoratively. Bleaching walnut was common in factories when blonde furniture was popular in the 1950s. Today furniture factories use stains to blend sapwood and heartwood.
>
>You can warm the tone of walnut by staining it or by putting color in the finish. You can use any type of stain, though a gel stain will not bring out the full richness of the figure. Most finishes contain a natural amber tint that warms the wood a little. Orange shellac contains the most color, and it is often used on walnut for this reason, though it's not a durable finish for tabletops. Water-based finishes are totally devoid of color, so there is more reason to use a stain under water base than under any other finish.
>
>Personally, I like just about any finish on walnut. I've used oil/varnish blend, wiping varnish, and film finishes. For objects other than tabletops, my favorite finish is orange shellac because of the warmth it adds to walnut (Photo 17-12 on page 268). When using other finishes, I often add warmth by staining the wood (a dark rust, commonly sold as American walnut) or adding dye to the finish (again, dark rust) and toning the wood.

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The only thing I'll add is "test, test, test". Don't try your ideas out on the final chest. Use test pieces of walnut to see how you like the results.

Doc should order this book

Yeah, most of the people there are talking nonsense, except for the guy who points out that Danish oil already contains polyurethane (or some other varnish; the main brands, Watco and Rustins, are both polyurethane, though). The Internet is an okay source of information for most woodworking topics, but for some reason it has a huge blind spot when it comes to wood finishes, and deliberate manufacturer misdirection is a big reason for it.

If you want a good foundational guide to modern wood finishes, the canonical one is Bob Flexner's Understanding Wood Finishing, with the caveat that he has an irrational hatred for pure drying oils.

I would wait and keep wiping down your project. If I’m nervous about adhesion I’ll do a coat of shellac which sticks to everything. Then you can do your poly.

Please test first. Good luck

Also invest in knowledge and read this. Sucks to be at the end of a project and have doubts.

Understanding Wood Finishing: How to Select and Apply the Right Finish (Fox Chapel Publishing) Practical & Comprehensive with 300+ Color Photos and 40+ Reference Tables & Troubleshooting Guides https://www.amazon.com/dp/1565235665/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_XtvWBb3YMTNDS

On my end, I've learned to hate tung oil. It's pricey, the real stuff takes a month to dry, and if it's drying faster than that... it was probably linseed oil I just overpaid for. :-/

Linseed oil has a great feel to it, but works best for dark woods or over dark stains; it'll yellow more than true tung oil over time.

The problem I see with your original plan is that the stain will mostly seal the wood, so the oil either won't soak in to give any protection... or the oil will re-wet the stain and pull up the color, which isn't a win. Oil works best on it's own, or maybe mixed with a dye, but

Bob Flexner's books are also fantastic here. If you have time to spend, this is used as a textbook for classes on wood finishing.

https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Wood-Finishing-Select-Finish/dp/1565235665

So going all the way back?

1. I'd experiment with either swapping oil for lacquer and doing a topcoat.
   
2. If I really really wanted oil finish on top, I'd experiment with adding dye directly to the oil, or (more consistent) using a water-based dye on the wood, letting it completely dry, then trying oil (this is basically what you're doing with the tea). Wear gloves; the dye is at least as permanent as a sharpie on skin.

I honestly would not consider wax to be a "wood finish" for anything beyond cheap wooden crafts and ornaments around the house. It's useless if you're actually trying to protect a piece of wood from pretty much anything. (Edit: Not trying to be rude, just being blunt about how poor a job wax does as a finish.)

https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Wood-Finishing-Comprehensive-Troubleshooting/dp/1565235665 Amazon has the book. I think a few other internet retailers carry it too.

I'm not sure you're going to find a cheap, easy-to-apply wood finish that will give you a classic "well-worn guitar" look in a reasonable time frame while still protecting the neck from the elements. I have guitars with plain oil finishes, polymerized oils, polyester, nitro lacquer, and shellac finishes on their necks, most of them 10-20 years old. I even have one from the '70s. None of them look like a relic yet.

You could finish the whole neck with a good semi-gloss finish (like Tru Oil) and then scuff the shine off the back of the neck (where your thumb would naturally wear the finish down over the years) with some 000 steel wool. That would make it look a bit worn in without compromising the integrity of the finish.

One of my projects this spring is to re-finish a few of my early projects that I slacked on. Picked up Understanding Wood Finishing by Bob Flexner to get ready.

If you REALLY want to learn all there is to know I highly recommend Bob Flexner's book it's really excellent and not too expensive.

I'm a finishing noob myself so I can't make any solid recommendations on brand. Though I have read that shellac is shellac no matter where you get it, so any brand should be fine.

Most recommendations for first-timers is to buy a pre-cut liquid based shellac and cut it down from there (with denatured alcohol). Plenty of info on the net for free but I've been using Understanding Wood Finishing as my reference.

Paul Sellers has a video up on applying a shellac finish (although his looks to be amber) which would aid in the technique department.

Hope this helps!

Finishing is not rocket science but it can get finicky very fast. Add to that the fact that the actual wood you are staining can influence the final look a lot and it only adds to disappointments.


Usually, people present their plans as to what and for what purpose and that encourages others to offer their solutions. some of the solutions won't be that great but other you may fined useful.



The quickest info (not sure about the graphic part) I am aware of is Understanding Wood Finishing and other companion books by the same author.