Need advice on finishing a pine baffle.

[owdi]

I'm building a floorstanding speaker with a pine+MDF sandwich baffle. The rest of the speaker will be a dark coffee brown, and I want the baffle to be as close to the natural color of fresh pine as possible.

I have very little experience staining wood, and would appreciate some advice. The baffles are cut and sanded, and I would hate to ruin them after so many hours of work.

I tried some wood hardener on the back of the baffle, but it left an ugly shinny surface. I let it cure for two days, and when I sanded it the sand paper developed little goop nuggets. Needless to say, I won't be using any more of this stuff.

I want to keep the color light and the surface not shiny, while making the wood more resistant to dings. Any suggestions? My guess is I need to treat, stain then coat, but I don't know what products to use.

EDIT: the baffle is made from a 8" x 6' pine board from Home Depot, and it's soft enough for me to dent with my fingernail.

Dan

[Tuukka]

Latex (or basically a non oil-based) urethane would work fine for keeping the original tone of the wood. Use a satin finish ofcourse. It protects well but tends to look a bit flat and lifeless. An oil based varathane would darken the surface a bit more and looks very nice on pine. It would provide the same sort of hard surface.

Another option would be to try oils. A tung oil would give a similiar finish to the latex urethane but with a bit more colour. A danish oil would give the same sort of tone as the oil-based varathane, it would also be a completely matte finish that would allow the wood to darken significantly under sunlight.

This is my experience. Hope it helps.

[owdi]

Do you recommend I treat the wood with something before applying the polyurethane or oil? I think I'm going to pass on staining since I don't want to darken the wood more than necessary.

Dan

[leadbelly]

Originally posted by owdi
Do you recommend I treat the wood with something before applying the polyurethane or oil? I think I'm going to pass on staining since I don't want to darken the wood more than necessary.

I use Minwax products because I can get them cheaply at Wal-Mart. A coat of their sanding sealer, then a few coats of natural colour stain, and then a few coats of clear polyurethane will give a durable, natural colour.

[Tuukka]

You should not need to treat the wood if you are only using a polyurethane or varathane. I've never tried them, but advice from other painters in my area is that conditioners are beneficial if you intend stain wood. I have found that pine can be tricky to stain, especially with strong grain patterns, with dark stains it tends to look unnatural. The light oak and ipswich are nice minwax tints.

[owdi]

Looks like I bought some Minwax oil based satin polyurethane for another project, which should work great for these baffles. After reading up a bit on how various finishes work, I now understand why I don't need to treat the wood for this project.

Some progress pics...



Dan

[69stingray]

Treat the wood with Minwax's Pre-Conditioner first. Follow the instructions on the back of the can. I stained a pine cabinet that looked just like that baffle before the stain and the color came out all over the place, some dark spots, some light spots, etc.

EDIT: For just polyurethane, not pre-conditioners is needed. NOTE: Polyurethane will yellow over time, which, when used by itself, is not a bad look/color.