Favorite Walnut Finishes

Excerpts from The Message Boards

Mamc asked: What’s your favorite finish for Walnut?

jesse cloud: Walnut takes a wide variety of finishes well. Danish oil or poly will work fine. I sometimes finish it with a couple of light coats of boiled linseed oil, followed by wax. Many varnishes work well, too. Or even just shellac.

A couple of issues with walnut…It is a somewhat open pored wood and the pores will show with most finishes. If this is not what you want, use a grain filler and a stain before finishing. The other issue is that walnut often has sapwood, which is much lighter than the heartwood. The sapwood will take the finish differently. If this is not what you want, you can selectively apply some dye or stain to the sapwood to even out the colors before the overall finish.

Probably the best advice anyone can give is to save some scrap pieces and try your finish on them before using it on your workpiece.

Clint Searl: Oil-based poly or lacquer. Walnut will take on a rich chocolate red tone with a dilute mahogany stain under the top coat. Don’t ruin it with BLO.

Ellis Walentine: An indoor entertainment unit is mostly vertical surfaces so the only areas where abrasion resistance is an issue would be the worksurface and the shelves themselves. Everywhere else, linseed oil or Danish oil would be fine. For abrasion resistance, you’d want some sort of lacquer or polyurethane.

If this were intended to imitate the complex color and richness of a period masterpiece, I’d suggest a multi-step regimen for laying down ground colors and then enhancing them with trasnparent dyes and glazes.

For new work that doesn’t have this need for authenticity, you have a couple choices with walnut: Lacquer is often “water white” or close to it, and forms a very uniform film that you may like or dislike. I’d suggest lacquering a sample or two to see if this appearance and feel are appealing. To warm and enrich the naturally cool brown color of new walnut, you might want to use a reddish-brown dye stain before topcoating. Polyurethane generally has a little more color (tone) to it and tends to give you a warmer look, but it’s harder to apply unless you have the skills and equipment to spray it. It is also more difficult to repair than most other finishes.

Danish oil tends to darken and dull walnut as it penetrates, and maybe this is the effect you are looking for. To protect wear surfaces, you might want to follow up with a varnish of some sort. I’m a Waterlox fan, but at $45 per quart or whatever they’re charging nowadays, I’m opting for different alternatives nowadays.

On the latest walnut piece I built, I brushed on a coat of SealCoat dewaxed shellac full strength, then sanded lightly with 220-grit and wiped on a couple dilute (cut 20% with naphtha) coats of Helmsman clear gloss spar varnish, which is relatively inexpensive compared to Waterlox and handles quite nicely when diluted. It goes on very thin so it dries dust free sooner, with fewer drips, sags and brush marks; but it takes probably twice as many coats to get an even build and sheen. Be sure to use gloss and not satin. If you want a more satiny surface, rub out the final coat with 0000 steel wool or synthetic abrasive pad and wipe with a very dilute varnish solution, then buff off the excess.

Mark Mandell: For furniture and flatwork:

1. Use a dye stain sparingly to blend any sapwood. No stain otherwise.
2. Seal and pop the grain with two coats of fresh dewaxed dark garnet shellac. 1st coat at ¾ lb cut, next at 1½ lb cut.
3. Fill pores with Crystal-lac filler sanded off with the grain.
4. Topcoat with either oil poly or waterborne acrylic lacquer or hp poly.

• Waterlox high gloss

DouginDenver: One issue not raised in any of the responses that I have been meaning to ask about is the way walnut changes color with time. Woods like cherry and mahogany get better and better looking as they get darker and richer—unless in very extreme direct sunlight for long periods. Walnut is one of my favorite woods except that even in indirect light it tends to lighten with time into a rather odd-looking greenish gold color that I personally find quite unattractive. Does anyone know of the best things to use to preserve something close to the look unstained or undyed wood, but keep it from turning color?

Bill Tindall, E.TN: I always stain walnut with some oil stain that is, or looks like, burnt umber. Stain keeps the walnut looking good for decades. Otherwise walnut can bleach to what I consider an unattractive shade. For a formal piece I will fill the pores, typically just the top. As far as the top coat, it depends on the piece and what it will be used for. If it needs to be durable I will varnish it. If its reproduction I will shellac it. Or I might lacquer it.