Antique finishing 2

  
Antique finishing 2

Antique finishing which is more impression of dirty, damaged, and old. There are a lot of distresses either by physical distress or stain distress. Show impression that things are really are old and used for long time, dirty or already damaged little bit. Some time is added with effects of certain special antique sometimes also added as dirty because of dust, house spiders, broken (crack), wormhole, etc.

Antique finishing for transparent color

antique gold finish

Antique finishing with heavy distress

Antique finishing with combination solid and transparent color

Antique finishing with heavy glaze effect 

Antique furniture finishing 1

Antique style furniture is still quite popular today. The definition of antique is an old things; things which already stay and used for long time, decades or hundreds of years aged. Antique furniture is old-fashioned furniture, which is a relic of the past. The real antique furniture of course today was no longer available in the furniture market because it has been destroyed or damaged with age. The antique furniture is still exist there might be placed only in the museum of antiquities or at the collectors but not in the furniture stores or in resident' s houses. The antique furniture that available in the market now, is antique-style furniture, the furniture which is made and produced with design and appearance like antique furniture (antique reproduction).

Antique furniture style is made with imitation or design based on the model furniture products in the past. Since when do people know about the furniture? It must have been a long time, maybe the same time as humans know the house and residence. Then with the development of civilization is the need for furniture is growing, too. The styles and models of furniture are also always changing and growing following the changes in civilization. One model of development that are considered essential furniture for the furniture industry today is the development model that occurred in England, France and America. Many peoples in Europe and America as a big market for furniture industries today, like furniture with a model and looks like their goods existed in the past. Therefore, the antique furniture made today most are made with design based on models of furniture that never existed in England, France and the United States, especially from the early 17th century to the present.

Antique furniture finishing

Antique furniture products always need the right finishing the match an antique appearance. Antique finishing process is the finishing process that makes furniture is looked like old furniture, as if the furniture was made and has been used since many years, (hundreds) years ago. Is inconceivable that the furniture that already hundreds of years old must have been dirty, dusty, damaged, lots of stains mark or mildew or there are some holes caused by worms or termites. Need also to be considering that the antique furniture was made at a time when modern finishing materials and equipments were not available yet. At that time furniture products were finished with a very simple process, using traditional finishing materials such as: oil, wax, or even just polished without painted at all. Antique finishing is the finishing techniques to produce a product made furniture today with the equipments and materials available today to create the appearance of old or antique, as if such the furniture is has become dirty or damaged due to age and usage.

This antique finish has a very wide range. There are many types and models that can be categorized finishing as a kind of antique finishing; starting from the most simple to complex, from the relatively clean appearance to the dirty, broke, or destroyed looked. The principle of antique finishing is to produce an old looked furniture product. How old appearance of a product should mainly follow the furniture design. A furniture design based on the style of furniture in the 17th century should be looked older, more damaged, more dirty than the designed furniture products based on product style furniture in the 19th century. But now, the style or appearance of a model of furniture products is made and decided by furniture designer and finally judged by the market tastes. So how is an antique finish, what effects of antique that used, or how dirty, or how damaged an antique furniture depends on the taste of the furniture designer who designed it and finally will be judged by the market.

antique natural finish

Antique finishing 1

An antique finishing looked with little distress, quite clean, and closer to the classic style. This is an imitation of old stuff which is always taken care and keeps in the good handling by the owner. The distress is little, but it still show that is an old piece, the glaze is left in the inside of the inside part to show little hang up and stain application is designed to make an old elegance look.

Antique finishing solid color

Antique finishing for solid color with some sand through

antique transparent finish

Glaze application to make antique wood furniture

Glaze to make antique look 

Instead of forming color, glaze can also be used to create the antique look, such as: dirty look , dirty mark, stain mark, dusty look or other effects that needed for antique furniture product. Some effects that can be made by using glaze to make antique look are: burnish glaze, cow tail, smudging and spatter. The most widely technique to get the effect is with dry brush technique. The glaze is brushed on the parts needed. Unlike the application to form a color, the glaze application for antique process is only done on the parts that needed it with the techniques of application according to the desired effect.

Burnish glaze. 

Burnish is a dark color effect on the some parts in furniture, usually at the corners or edges to give the dirty appearance and dark effect to the edges parts. This effect is usually done by brush the glaze on the edges.
 

 

Dry brush in the furniture make old and antique looked

Cow tail 

Cow tail is a dirty look or spots like get cow tail marks. Its application can be done with a brush or other special tool specifically designed to apply glaze to duplicate the cow tail mark in the finishing.

cow tail

 

Cow tail and burnish glaze make furniture looked old and dirty

Spatter, specs, splash

Spatter is some small spots on the finish. This effect is made using air spray gun, the air pressure and the volume valve is adjust in the low position so the material is not perfectly atomized, but just splash on the finish.

Spatter in finishing to make more antique looked

antique finish with glaze

antique furniture finish

How to use glaze in furniture finishing

How to apply glaze. 

Glaze is a wiping stain, his application always requires wiping. Glaze is special stain that is applied between the clear coatings. The glaze application directly to the wood will tend to soak and absorbed by the wood and make blotchy and dirty color. The glaze is need to be applied on a smooth surface.
Glaze application can be done by sprayed, poured, and wiped then brushed to get the even color. Glaze is designed to form color and fill the pores and grains and enhanced the beauty of wood grains and pores. This glaze is made from the pigment colors with a kind of binder and oil solvent which is not dissolve a sealer or top coat. Thus, this glaze can be applied over a sealer or top coat with very high flexibility. However glaze need to be applied in the right way to get the best result. There 2 function of glaze in the finishing: to form color and to make antique looked.

1. Glaze to form color

To form the color, glaze is usually applied over a thin sealer (wash coat). Wash coat is a thin sealer that is used as a sealer to coat the stain before glaze application. With wash coat the glaze could still come in and fill the pores and grains of wood, but it wont bite too much so it prevent getting color spot or too dark. Wash coat also protecting the stain underneath so it is not resolve during glaze application. You can apply glaze by pouring, spraying or brushing on the surface, but after that need to be wiped and brushed to get glaze evenly covered the surface. To enhance the grain and get the live looked, the glaze can be highlighted.

Glaze is poured into the surface, wipe and brushed evenly, and highlighted

Highlight glaze is the wiped off glaze, and make some light color on certain parts. With the right highlight the finishing will looked more live, rich, enhanced the beauty of the grain. Highlight can be done using a rag or steel wool after glaze is applied evenly over the surface. The highlight on this glaze must consider and follow the pattern of wood grains. A highlight on a flat surface is to enhance the grain so it needs to follow the grain pattern in the wood. In the carvings or in crevices of the highlight is done by removing the glaze on the outside part, and leave the glaze inside. This will make the outer surface look a little lighter while the inside while carving or cracks will appear slightly darker. This will make carvings and crevices are becoming more visible prominent, lively and interesting.

Glaze application to fill and coloring inside the carving

The glaze application always need to be layered with clear coating. The clear coating on the glaze will protect the glaze layer. Without clear coating protection the glaze layer will easy to be wipe off and removed for its underneath surface.. But the clear coating application on the glaze must be done when he glaze is thoroughly dry. The glaze which is not dry can cause many finishing problems such as: crack, muddy looked, bubble, pinhole, and adhesion problem.

The glaze is solve in a slow dry solvent, since it make its easier in application. But since that we need to provide long time to let the glaze is dry. The drying time of the glaze depend on the type of glaze and also the thickness of the glaze layer. the drying time may vary from 1 hour to days. Make sure the glaze has already dry before it is layered with clear coating.

How to apply stain for furniture finishing

The stain that can be used for coloring in the finishing process now is available in many  types and brand. This time we are talking about the application of stain, what we mean with the stain here is a stain that used for coloring the wood for transparent colors. This stain is more known as wood stain and usually applied directly to the wood before the application of clear coating. 

 

 

stain application by brush

. 

brush for stain application

Applications stain by brush. 

The using brush for stain application is most uses in the simple finishing process. This method requires no special equipment such as spray gun, and special facilities as: spray booth, air pressure, compressor, etc. The equipment needed is a brush and cloth which is relatively very cheap when compared with spray equipment and his facilities. This method is very easy to do, can be done with ordinary people, does not need an operator with special skill. People can do it easily without need long time for learning. Another advantage of this method is not requiring special facilities. What he need is just a safe room, cover from the outside air, heat or rain and have adequate lighting.

The stain that is brushed is need a thinner that make the stain is dry slowly to make him easy to be brushed evenly and minimize the brush mark. To brush the stain evenly, we need the brush with a flat tip. Actually there is a type of brush that has a flat end and subtle that are designed for applications the paint evenly, leaving no brush lines. If you cannot find this brushed you can wrapped the tip of brushed with cloth. This method is done in some traditional finishing process and work quite good.

Stain with a brush application will allow stain to wet the wood and and let the stain wet and soak into the wood grain and pores. This would make the resulting color will looked very natural, show and enhance the character and beauty of wood grain. This method is suitable for finishing with the looked is to show the beauty of the wood grain and pores.

The disadvantage of this method is his limitation in adjustment. The color of the finish but is determined by the color of stain used and also depend on the color of the wood base. If there any variation of the basic color of the wood, then the resulting of finishing color will also vary. Brushing method cannot used (is very difficult) to adjust the thickness of the stain applied. This application process requires good preparation to the unfinished product. The sanding is needed to be good, so all there is no scratches or stain mark, glue mark and other problem. The defect such as: sanding mark, glue mark, stain mark, or other, will be seen very clearly in the final color. For soft wood such as: aghatis, pine and sengon this process will also be very risky to get of stain blotchy.  
For objects with small size this application method could be done dipping. The product is dipped and immersed in a liquid stain until all surface is wet by the stain. After few second, then lift the product from the stain and wipe the excess with rag. The dipping process principally is similar with the brushed method. The dipping system is easier than brushed, and can be done faster. But it requires a quite lot of stain is to make sure the entire product can be immersed in the stain. For big product this method needs a large tank and big volume of finishing materials.

spray stain with cup gun

spray stain with spray gun

Application stain by spray 

Application spray stain is the most often used in the process of finishing today. By spray, the stain can be applied uniformly, and easy adjusted and controlled the layer to get desired thickness. Today most of finishing material include stain are designed to be applied by spray. The advantages of the spray method are: the result is very even, ease to be adjusted to the desired color. The spraying process is also very fast compare with brushed application. While the disadvantages of the spray are: require spray devices are expensive, require special finishing room with special facilities, and need more of finishing materials. To obtain the good result and less materials usage it needs the skillfully operator.

There are several spray techniques for application of finishing materials that are: dry spray, spray a medium wet spray and wet spray. 

Wet spray technique 

To get material transfer efficiency high we need to use wet spray technique as far as we can. Wet spray is spray the technique which is so the material as much as possible to wet the surface, but the finishing materials is not sags or flow. Wet spray is the most efficient spray, then as far as possible all the finishing materials should be applied by wet spray. Wet spray stains to the wood can make the stain wet fill and coloring in the pores and grain. Even so, of course, the spray application can not wet the wood surface as the stain brushed.

Wet spray technique is done by adjusting the air pressure on the spray gun at pressures as low as possible is enough to atomized the finishing material. Then the movement of spray gun is done correctly in order to wet the surface evenly. About how the movement of spray gun and spray gun setup can be seen on my other article about how to use spray gun correctly. 

Dry spray techniques 

Sometimes the finishing process is also needed another spray technique called dry spray technique. It is meant that the stain is sprayed with little material is applied in the wood surface. Dry spray is done by adjust the spray gun in high air pressure and small volume of finishing material so the finishing material that came out slightly, and to get the desired thickness the application is done in several times. This spray technique is used for finishing material application that functions to add color in some places to even and blend the final finishing color. This method is use to apply: sap stain, equalizer and pad stain stain. Those stains are added in the area that needs to even the wood color and to get the uniform final color.

Different with the wet spray technique, the spray gun is set to spray in a high volume air pressure with small volume of finishing material. The transfer efficiency material with the dry spray technique material is low, since that this method is avoided as far as possible. 

Medium wet spray technique 

The medium spray is the spray technique, between the wet and dry spray. This spray technique is sometimes necessary because the finishing material used can not be applied by wet spray. Medium wet spray technique can also be done to reduce the possibility of the blotchy stain to the soft wood. Compared to the wet spray the medium wet spray has lower transfer efficiency material. Since that this method is need to be avoid as far as possible. If in the process of finishing there any finishing material is need to sprayed with medium wet, try to adjust the material finishing spray so it can be applied with a wet spray, for example by reduce with an appropriate solvent.

How to use the spray gun for furniture finishing 2

Spray technique (spray gun moving techniques) 

The spraying techniques include: setting the distance between the spray gun with a coated surface, the speed of spray gun movement, spray gun position, and how the movement of spray gun. To obtain optimal results the way the spraying must be done properly and this requires the basic knowledge and enough practice and exercise. Some basic things that must be considered in the spraying techniques are:

• The movement of spray gun ( gun stroke) should be a smooth and consistent, with a speed is about 7 m / min.

• Spray gun held to always remain perpendicular to the surface of sprayed surface area, except for certain parts such as corners, or cracks, carving, or some other special shape.

•  Every stroke of spray gun is done so the material covers half area from the previous spraying (overlap 50%).

• The distance of the spray gun is kept in about 15cm-25cm.from the surface area

• Finishing the material out when spray gun is moved to be set fixed unchanging, the trigger spray gun should in fully open position, while the amount material setting has done by setting spray gun at the beginning. When we stroke the gun we focus on the movement of the spray gun without annoying by the trigger the gun.

• Spray gun triggers should be release of as much as possible just before it reached the end of the sprayed area

• For spraying large object, then start spraying in the invisible (not important) part such as: the bottom, back, inside, while the most visible and should look good such as the front or the top leaves is sprayed at the last.

Spray horizontal surface

Spray vertical surface

r

Spray for cabinet

The wrong spray movement

The right spray movement

The right position of spray gun

Spray too far

Spray to close

How to use the spray gun for furniture finishing 1

Spray gun now is the most popular equipment for finishing materials applications in the furniture finishing. Spray gun is equipment that can atomize the finishing materials and directing them to a desired surface. Spray gun is very flexible equipment, easy to be managed and produce smooth surface, evenly distributed finishing material with the desired thickness. The other application techniques of finishing materials such as by using a roller, brush, or dipping can not produce the coating result as the spray gun.
The advantage of the air spray gun is that he can atomize the finishing materials. Atomization is the process by which a liquid material is converted into a set of materials with very small size like a fog. The material atomization that is obtained with the air spray gun is the best compare with other equipment. By the perfect atomization, the finishing materials can easily be directed to coat to the desired surface with the results is very even and smooth and in a desired thickness.
While the disadvantage of the air spray gun is the efficiency of material transfer is relatively low compared to the other techniques, therefore the use of spray gun should be done the right way in order to reduce the waste of finishing materials.

 the air spray gun

There are many of types of spray gun that can be selected in accordance with the need to optimize the efficiency of finishing materials use. You can see the spray gun types in the previous article the spraying equipment. In this article we will specifically discuss about the technique of how to use the spray gun. As the discussion base we use the air spray gun, the simplest and the first discovered spray gun. The technique of using air spray gun can then be used for the other types of spray gun, because basically the spray gun have similar in working principle.

There are 2 main things that must be considered in the use of spray gun, that are: how to setup the equipment and spraying techniques (a technique to move the spray gun). Both 2 things need to be done in the correct way to minimize the wasting the finishing material and to give good coating result.

How to set the air spray gun

 setting for spray vertically

Air spray gun has 4 things can be arranged as follows: wide fan spray, spray fan direction, the volume of the finishing materials and the air pressure that flow to the spray gun. Finishing the material volume is set so that when sprayed on the finishing materials can fill the entire fan spray evenly. While air pressure setting is set at the lowest possible pressure which is sufficient to produce a perfect atomization of the finishing material. Wide fan spray is set to adjust according to the width of the surface to be coated, while the direction of the fan spray is set vertically or horizontally depending on the most easily movement of spray gun is carried out to coat the targeted areas.

 setting for spray horizontally

Setting the air pressure on the spray gun is  very important because it will greatly affect the efficiency of the material transfer in the application. The higher the pressure used the lower the transfer efficiency of material obtained. For more details can be seen in the example the following data:

Air pressure	Efficiency of materials transfer
3 bar	45 %
4.5 bar	35 %
6 bar	25 %

The table show that the higher the air pressure is used, make the efficiency of material transfer become lower. Therefore, the air pressure used should be set at the lowest to get the highest material transfer efficiency. But of course the air pressure should not be too low, because if the pressure is too low will make atomization of the material that is not perfect, then resulting in an imperfect layering of coating.

Airless and air assisted spray gun

atomization in the airless spray gun
 

Airless spray gun

The airless spray gun has different atomization method with the air spray. If the in the air spray gun, the material atomization is the result and together with the flow of compressed air, then in the airless spray gun the atomization of materials is occur without air mixed with the finishing material (airless). The material is pressed with a very high pressure and then passed through a small orifice, and then atomization occurs. The pressure required is very high, up to 1000 psi (68 bar). Therefore the airless spray gun needs high pressure pump and material hose that can withstand the high pressure. This equipment can generate the high speed and the efficiency of transfer material is higher than the air spray.
Another advantage of this airless spray is can be used for application materials with high viscosity. The weakness of this equipment is the spray result is not too good, because the atomization of the material is not as perfect as the atomization with air spray. Because of this, the airless spray gun is relatively rarely used in furniture finishing industry. The airless spray gun is usually only used for sealer application, which is followed by sanding and then layer with another coating material. Currently finishing furniture industry mostly use the air assisted airless spray gun or air mixed spray gun, the modification of the airless spray gun.

Air assisted airless (air mixed) spray gun

The air assisted airless spray gun is the development of the airless spray gun. It is the airless spray gun but with pressure air flow to improve the atomization of material. The atomization results obtained is better than airless spray gun, though not as good as the air spray. This make the air assisted airless spray gun is more widely used in furniture finishing industry. The use of air assisted spray gun is mainly to the sealer and top coat application. This equipment can do a faster job compare with air spray gun. The atomization is not as perfect as the air spray gun but is still acceptable in the furniture finishing industry. This equipment is still possible to spray glaze but it is not available to spray stain.
The disadvantages of the air assisted airless spray gun is his less flexibility compared with the air spray gun. In the air spray gun, the operator can easily adjust the volume of material, wide fan spray and pressure air to get the best spray result. In the air assisted or airless spray gun, the volume of material cannot be adjusted because it depends on orifice size that was installed in the spray gun. Limited adjustment can only be done to the wide fan spray and the air pressure that are added to assist atomization. The limitations the air assisted airless spray gun, make this equipment is not possible to do medium wet spray or dry spray. The uses of this equipment are only for spray base coat, paint, sealer, top coat and glaze application. For the stain application that need more briefly adjustment we still use the air spray gun.