Replies

1. 
   john_c2 | Oct 20, 2020 03:09am | #1

   An oil finish is going to add a lot of color to your oak too.

   Water based poly feels rougher only because the water raises the grain. So, raise the grain first. When you are ready for finish, wipe the whole piece down with a damp rag. Let dry. It will feel rough. Sand lightly with 220 or 320. Then finish. After 2 coats sand very lightly to smooth. Add another coat. It should be as smooth as any other finish you can do.

2. 
   lat_axe | Oct 20, 2020 03:35am | #2

   You can't stop oak yellowing unless the finish coat has some very effective UV absorbers. We have oak doors and other fittings in our house that have remained a paler (but paler yellow, nevertheless) than all the oak furniture I made myself, courtesy of some sort of varnish .... but, as you intimate, that varnish is probably a polyurethane stuff and it looks too "I'm here on these doors" to me.

   You could bleach the oak - but that's a process fraught with gremlins that can make a mess of it.

   There are some wax & oil finishes that are pretty tough - Osmo Top Oil for wooden kitchen worktops, for example. I can tell you from long experience with two different wooden worktops that it is very tough. But student, teenagers and hooligans can mark, ding, ring and generally degrade any such surface. .....

   The great advantage of an oil-wax finish is that its very easy to repair, which can't be said for many harder coat-finishes. Scratch one of those and you have to refinish the whole top, often involving sanding back to the wood. An oil-wax finish can be rubbed down to get rid of the mark then re-done only at the patch. Eventually (when the wood underneath once more reacts with the UV to darken down to the colour of the unpatched wood) the repair will disappear.

   Why not just accept that the item will acquire "history"? Most students I know are unconcerned with having things look pristine. Will it hold a keg and 29 grog-pots is what they want to know. :-)

   Lataxe

3. 
   gwentrevelyan | Oct 20, 2020 05:58am | #3

   I’m not an expert in finishes, but something I considered when trying to find similar for a pale maple bath panel I made this year was adding a very small amount of dye (purple, green or blue to counter the warm tones) to my finish similar to how people with white hair might use a blue or purple rinse. In the end I realised the shade in my bathroom meant the difference would be hardly noticeable so the warm(er) tones weren’t really an issue.

   I find it funny how one poster has assumed the age/‘wild student’ status of your daughter, but as the daughter of a woodworker myself I just want to say that if my beloved, sadly now late father ever made me a desk, I wouldn’t have brought it to uni with me. Perish the thought! And I would always use a coaster :)

4. 
   gulfstar | Oct 20, 2020 06:59am | #4

   I was aiming at the same when I finished a piece of hickory furniture which also exhibits coarse grain and white sapwood. I used general finishes sanding sealer under 4 coats of high performance poly and there has been no amber tones developing. They also make a UV protected poly that I also used for shelves along windows that also has not yellowed through the years.

5. 
   _mj_ | Oct 20, 2020 07:57am | #5

   I have an oak floor in my home that I wanted white. I used a whit pigment stain by Deft and followed it with moisture cure poly. 20 years later in a sun soaked room it's still white.

6. 
   geedubbee | Oct 20, 2020 09:55am | #6

   As mentioned, white oak yellows. We often don't see it as it is often stained, fumed or dyed dark. I would take _MJ_'s testimony to heart and see if a white pigment will fly. If not, explain that wood is a natural product and if they wanted white melamine you could have saved them some money ;-)

7. 
   DRBWWing | Oct 20, 2020 10:06am | #7

   Not necessarily my favorite, but I've sprayed wb poly and gotten a nice surface. 4-5 coats, sanding with 400 grit between coats. Can't achieve it with brushing.

   The first coat will raise the grain, so I sand with 320. After that no worries.