Perfect DIY wood trim

[Bruce Kennedy]

You dont need a dust free environment of even a spray gun to do beautiful varnish work. Just a little elbow grease and paitence. If you trim is crazing or checked you will have to strip the old finish. It will take a pretty strong chemical stripper and I would experiment on an extra piece first! If it is just hazy or cloudy looking you can probably get away with just sanding most of the old finish away.
To get it looking like it did when new will require many coats (10 to 12). My preference is to use a foam brush. Work clean ! Dont dip your brush in the can and strain the varnish you are applying. You must sand between each coat, but very lightly for the first couple of coats. Also dont sand in the same area that you are varnishing in and make sure each coat is thoroughly dry before putting on the next coat ( sunshine really helps cure vanish but if thats not available the oven on very low after its dry to the touch will speed it along).At first it will be easy to burn through because you dont have any depth yet. You also want to wipe the pieces down with denatured alcohol and a tack cloth after each sanding. After the third coat I use 320 grit. When you get to the final coats your sanding should make each piece look a uniform milky color with no shiny spots. For your final sanding start with 800 grit, then 1000, then 1200. Then polish with 3M finese it and perfect it. You may even want to wax it for a little extra protection.
It sounds like alot of work but it really isnt because the area you are doing is so small. I used to have a small shop and did wooden boat restoration. I used these technics to get flawless dust free results in a very dusty environment. Happy sanding!



85 300td
85 300d
83 300d
81 240d
84 300sd (just picked this one up for $1500 and its incredable)