Month: June 2012

Drilling holes in wood is fairly straight-forward. But you have to be careful that you don’t damage the wood. Here is a short wood drilling overview, telling you how to drill in wood. We are assuming you are going to use an electric drill. You can use a hand drill but given the cheap prices, a power drill is a sound investment.

Using a power drill is easy but you can damage the wood if you don’t know what you are doing. Nowadays, a cordless drill is recommended, you can use most cordless drills as screwdrivers as well. But it is nothing wrong with a corded drill, you are limited by the cord but you don’t have any batteries to worry about.

Although most drill bits will make holes in wood, it is still best to use drill bits that are made for wood. Brad-point bits are best for small holes while Forstner bits are best for larger holes. Bits meant for other materials can damage the wood. But if you are careful, most twist bits will do a reasonable job.

Wood drilling is easy, if you do the right preparations. Of course you can start drilling without any preparations but that you increase the chances of success by doing some easy preparations.

First you should make sure that you know how deep you are going to drill. Most drills have a control bar that you can use to set the depth. If your drill does not have a control bar, you can use masking tape to mark how deep you are going to drill. Wrap the tape tightly around the drill bit so that the tape stops at the right depth. Once the tape touches the wood, you have drilled deep enough.

Mark the center of the hole and use a hammer and nail to make a small indentation. This makes sure that the hole will be in the right place and minimizes the risk of damaging the wood. Without the indentation, the drill could slip and damage the wood.

Drill slowly and don’t use too much pressure. The wider the hole, the slower you should drill. Make sure to back off from time to time. This removes sawdust and woodchips from the hole.

If you are drilling all the way through a piece of wood, it is very likely that the bit will damage the wood when it exits on the other side. This can be prevented by clamping a piece of sacrificial wood where the drill bit exits.

Wood finishing is the process of protecting or improving the look of a wooden surface. A good finish makes a wood item good looking, no matter how good, or bad, the item is. Wood finishing is very much about getting the preparations right. Here is a short wood finishing overview.

Safety is important when working with wood finish. Already short exposure to some finishing products can cause irritation to the skin, eyes and throat as well as headaches and dizziness. Longer-term exposure may cause serious health issues. Not only are some products health hazards, they can also be highly flammable. A few of the oil-derived products may combust spontaneously in room temperature. Safety is not to be taken lightly when working with wood finishing products.

You can prepare the wood manually but it takes a lot of time and is seldom fun. You use a plane or scraper first and then use a sanding block to get a smooth surface. But using a power sander is a much faster solution. A random orbit sander is very versatile and does not leave any swirl marks. A palm orbital sander can be necessary for surfaces that can’t be reached with a larger sander. Even if you use a power sander, you may need to do some manual sanding but the sander will do most of the work for you.

Unfortunately, a coat of finish will not only make the wood look better, it will also magnify flaws. This means that you need to get rid of flaws and blemishes before you apply finish. Small blemishes are generally easy to remove by using wax or shellac sticks. Larger blemishes can often be concealed with wood filler or with a patch. The latter requires that you create a mortise and glue the patch into it. Needless to say, this requires a fair bit of experience.

You have a huge number of different wood finishes to choose from. Sometimes, finishes are divided into three different types, evaporative, reactive and coalescing. Evaporative finishes are dissolved in materials that evaporate once applied, leaving only the finish on the wood. Reactive finishes react with other materials, for example oxygen.

Staining is used to change the appearance of the wood. Typically, cheap wood is stained so that it looks like expensive wood. For open-grain woods you can use grain filler to produce a high-gloss finish.

Bleaching is a way of lighten the color of the wood. Bleaching is used for a several different purposes. Note that bleach can also affect your tools, so be careful. Pickling is the art of making new wood look like aged antique wood.

Wood finishes can be applied in a number of ways but the quickest and most efficient way is to use a spray gun.