Finishing 2 Faces Made Easy

My finishing started going much faster thanks to my friend Charlie, do not tell him I am giving him credit for this. Back in the day, what I used to pretty commonly do was, I'd spray a face, and then I would let that completely dry and then I would flip it over and I would spray the other face. So, I was actually working on tabletops with my friend Charlie one day and I sprayed one side and sprayed the backs and walked away. And he said, "What are you doing?" And I said, I'm waiting for that to dry so we can flip 'em over later. He said, "No, just flip 'em over now.

Who cares? It's the back." So the more I thought about this, he was in a position where he, big commercial cabinet shop, it's all about getting stuff out the door. So his look at stuff was bam, bam, time is money. That being said, I have found, this is a really good approach to finishing, whether you're spraying finish, like I'm about to, or you're wiping it on. Here's the way to look at this.

What I'm gonna do is spray the back of this first. I'm gonna then flip it on painter's pyramids and spray the front. And we'll come back later after the finish is dry and look at the back. And honestly, the marks there are so negligible. So if this is a tabletop and that's the bottom of the top, if it's a solid wood top for a dresser, and it's the bottom of the top.

These are all scenarios where like this, this is gonna hang on the wall. So even if there were tiny little marks from the painter's pyramids on here, it's not gonna make a big difference. But, like I said, I think what you'll see is that the marks left behind by those things are so negligible, it's just not worth thinking about. Now, I'm spraying lacquer. And I know people always ask about this.

So, we've got an exhaust fan running, and that's evacuating the junk out of the air. That's why I don't have a mask on, because we're pulling a lot of air past this work surface. Now here's the thing. When you're gonna do this, what I wanna do is spray the back, but not come around the edges much. Because what I wanna be able to do is grab it, flip it and not have my hands in wet finish when I do that.

So, I really just wanna hit the horizontal here. Now I can hit everything, because I don't need to worry about touching these edges anymore. All right, I'll wrap this up. Lacquer dries crazy fast. So we'll come back in just a little bit, and I'll show you the back and you can see if we can even find any marks left by those pyramids, and what you think of this process.

All right, let's do the reveal. This lacquer has been drying, I dunno, about an hour. It's dry enough to touch, lacquer dries crazy fast. Here's our front. And then give you a kind of a glancing look across the back.

It's definitely got finish on it. And the look across the back is, are there unsightly marks left by those painter's pyramids that would make us say, I'm never doing that again? And honestly, with both looking at it and touching it, there is nothing here that would prevent me from using this technique again. So just, it's a little dose of reality and a little dose of keeping your projects moving along a little bit faster. Get the finish on the back, flip it over on some kind of pyramid or other finishing points, finish the front and it's all good, and it's gonna keep things moving along a little quicker.