Hi all, I am building a wood guard rail for my stair case opening. For those of you not into construction and the code books. A guard rail is a rail that keeps someone from falling off of a surface like from one floor to the next or off a deck. This differs from a hand rail in that it is not required that the guard rail be a little thing that you can hold onto.
Anyway the guard rail in question is made from Cherry and is about 2 1/4″ thick by 4 1/2″ wide and has a round over on all four edges (Both tops and the bottoms) The piece is stained with a light to medium stain kind of a red mahogany (to basically match the rest of the trim in the house)
So anyway this thing is little stained and it has a couple layers of shellac on it. Now I originally planed on putting some poly on over that but I was thinking last night that maybe I should just wax it. I have two tables in the living room that have the same basic finish (also on Cherry) that has Poly on them but the entertainment center is just waxed. And the EC looks better in my opinion and does not have the issues with the Poly (one of the tables the poly as for lack of a better word chipped a bit) Only thing is while this is not a hand rail as such it is something that people will run their hand along it is just one of those things. It is about 11′ long and people will rub their hands on it I am sure (we all love to rub our hands on nice smooth wood don’t we?)
So what do you all think will the wax bit work? At this point I have the shellac on it so I have to go from here. I am hoping the wax will be ok and if I need to I can always redo that type of finish.
If the wax is ok what type of wax would you suggest. It has been a long time since I used wax (the EC was built about 10 years ago)
Doug Meyer
Replies
wax is fine.
shellac is fine.
wax over shellac is fine.
any wax will do- from furniture paste wax to car wax(though most car waxes have a lingering odor).
The wax will make it look nice for a while...... a day or so, perhaps. But it will feel nice for longer, so that is good. A better solution and not a lot of work would be to use some wipe-on poly. I used the Minwax brand on a set of kitchen cabinets that professional finishers wouldn't touch for less then an open checkbook. They turned out very nice..... a good facelift without a lot of hassle.
Ok first off why would the wax not look nice after a day or two? My entertainment center looks ok and it is about 10 years old? Is it because the the touching?
As for the whip on Ploy I have used that else were (when I needed better protection) but I am not sure this needs the poly. And frankly is something goes wrong with the poly finish or (and this is likely to happen) someone damages the railing then I have the issue of trying to fix it. It seams to me that it is much simpler to fix the stain/shellac/wax then the stain/shellac/poly combo.
Stripping the wax is simple and the rest of it just would need to be fixed and refinished. The reason for the concern is that I see a lot of guard rails that have been all scraped up after a few years. And I don't think that Poly as good as it is, will protect from a scrape all that much better then the wax will. (By that I mean they will both get messed up) So if I can protect it from what is the most likely thing to damage it then I was figuring I am better off to make it as simple to repair as I can.
Doug Meyer
By all means, wax away. Any good paste wax will do. There are some good ones now that don't use a petroleum solvent. They smell like an orange. I've used Johnson's paste wax for years..... it's good. Renaissance wax is a micro-crystalline wax that is expensive but excellent.
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