Bob Hoover Ross
Senior Member
- Messages
- 205
Confession: I not only have next to zero experience applying finishes, I also have next to zero patience 
That being said, I'm now in the process of applying a clear satin Minwax water-based Helmsman Spar Urethane finish to the raw Padouk neck and body I recently acquired from Warmoth. Minwax recommends applying this finish with a synthetic bristle brush.
What I'm finding is that no matter how sparsely I load up the brush, and no matter how many times I go back & forth over the wood, there still seems to be a lot of finish "pooling"/building up around the edges, and/or gravity is pulling some of the finish to the bottom-most edge of the work after I leave it to dry. This necessitates having to do more sanding than I would have expected; it often seems like I'm doing so much sanding to remove these thicker gobs of built-up finish that I'm also removing most of the finish where it didn't pool!
Am I (still) just applying too much finish at a time? Any recommendations for applying it even more sparsely? Would changing from a brush to a wipe-on approach help? (I had asked MinWax whether the Helmsman Spar could be applied via wipe-on and their response was "when you apply via a wipe-on method, you don't always get the same level of film build, so you may need to apply a few extra coats." Sounds like maybe that would be a good thing in my case?)
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
That being said, I'm now in the process of applying a clear satin Minwax water-based Helmsman Spar Urethane finish to the raw Padouk neck and body I recently acquired from Warmoth. Minwax recommends applying this finish with a synthetic bristle brush.
What I'm finding is that no matter how sparsely I load up the brush, and no matter how many times I go back & forth over the wood, there still seems to be a lot of finish "pooling"/building up around the edges, and/or gravity is pulling some of the finish to the bottom-most edge of the work after I leave it to dry. This necessitates having to do more sanding than I would have expected; it often seems like I'm doing so much sanding to remove these thicker gobs of built-up finish that I'm also removing most of the finish where it didn't pool!
Am I (still) just applying too much finish at a time? Any recommendations for applying it even more sparsely? Would changing from a brush to a wipe-on approach help? (I had asked MinWax whether the Helmsman Spar could be applied via wipe-on and their response was "when you apply via a wipe-on method, you don't always get the same level of film build, so you may need to apply a few extra coats." Sounds like maybe that would be a good thing in my case?)
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
