Pine wood furniture

Pine has long been known as a furniture substrate. Various kinds of indoor furniture like bedroom sets, occasional tables, cupboard, and dinning table and even more stuff are made from pine wood. Generally pine is a soft wood with a strong character of grain but his grain texture is soft. This wood has a few small pores and shallow; with a white yellowish color base. The pine wood for furniture is quite popular, since it has nice grain, easy to be sourced and his price is relative low. The pine wood mostly is used for indoor furniture, since it is a soft wood which is not strong enough for outdoor furniture.

There are many species of pine trees; each of them has sightly different properties, even though they are similar. The important character that need to be considered in the furniture finishing is the wood base color and grain pattern, and  both will vary depend on the species and the origin of the pine tree. There are about 125 species of pine trees grow and spread in various places on this earth, especially in high areas. 

 pine furniture

• Finishing for pine wood

This wood has a beautiful pattern with strong character of grain; finishing with transparent color is good choice for this wood. Natural color is the finishing color that is widely used for the pine furniture even basically we can make any color with this wood. It has a light base color that easy to stained to make any darker color. The dark brown or light brown color is the used for this wood.

There are also much pine furniture with solid color available in the market since this wood is quite easy to be finished with solid color. His soft grain texture and his pores which are small and shallow make it easy to be closed and covered with a finishing layer. There are wide range of pine furniture model, from the simple model with clean looked finish to the antique country model with antique, dirty finish.

The condideration of finishing for pine furniture

•  Pine is a soft wood

Pine is soft wood and he has a high porosity, since that he will absorb more finishing materials. The stain applications directly on the wood have to be done carefully. The application stain that is too wet will risk of getting blotchy or color is too dark because of too much absorption of stain. Therefore avoid the application of stain that is too wet. Application of stain with a medium wet spray is a good choice to produce an even stain coloration. The stain with fast drying thinner and the used of toner stain (wood stain with little clear coating inside) is another trick to avoid blotchy on the coloring process. The stain applications by wiping or brushing should be done carefully, use a thin stain since a thick stain will risk of occurrence of blotchy in the color.
Blotchy problem would not happen in a finishing with solid color, but since this wood is soft and has high porosity then he will absorb more finishing materials. This wood also will raise more wood fibers, so it need more sanding process to get the smooth finishing result. 

• The sanding for pine wood.

The pine wood as well as other soft wood requires little different sanding technique than the hardwood. The pine wood sanding is to be done by using sandpaper from low grade to high grade gradually as the other wood. But he will consume more of sandpaper. than the hardwood.  This wood has a lot of wood fibers which are will stack and attached on the sandpaper. This wood also has a high porosity therefore he will absorb more water from the environment.  This phenomenon will make this wood become rough if it stayed for long time. The finishing process should be done immediately after finish the sanding raw wood. Wood that was already sanded with smooth surfaces if it is left for long time need to be re sanded before the finishing process is started. To help the process of sanding we can do glue sizing for this wood. Glue sizing instead of to produce smooth surfaces will also reduce the porosity of the wood surface so that it will help to produce smooth surface for the finish result.

• Blue stain on pine wood

Pine is highly risk to get fungus on it. When his environment is humid or wet, there will be some fungi on it and it will make some blue stain on the wood. Blue stain will disturb the finishing color since it will appear on finishing results, especially for a transparent color finish. Therefore, the wood processing should be done properly. Once the tree is cut off then he should immediately be processed and dried to prevent the fungal growth.

•   Oil in the pine wood

Pine is resinous wood; this wood is used as raw material for the resin manufacture. This wood contains oil that could interfere the finishing result. The oil pines although not as bad teak oil will come out and appear in the final finishing looked. The oil will ruin the finishing appearance  for the solid color finish since it obviously visible, but not for the transparent color finish. This pine oil usually comes out through from the knot, so for solid color finish we should block the knot of this wood to prevent the oils come through. A catalyst clear coating can be used to block the knot and prevent the oil to come out. Some paint factories also prepare pine knot sealer, a special sealer to block the knot in the pine wood.