If you are planning to build a house of your own, you must know that there are two stages involved in the process. First, you construct the grey structure of the house and then comes the costlier part – finishing. If you carefully look at the budget of an A+ category 10 marla home, you will realise that a sizable portion of your budget is spent in woodwork. If you are looking for ways to cut down on your budget, then you should consider polishing unfinished wooden doors on your own. This will not only save you a good amount of money, but you will also learn a few tricks of the trade. So, let us check out this step-by-step guide on how to polish raw wood like a pro!
How to Polish Raw Wood like a Pro!
There are six steps involved in order to polish raw wood like a professional. You will need the following things:
- Plaster of paris
- Kerosene oil
- Varnish
- Lac Dana
- Spirit
- Yellow Sina/Brown Sina (colour)
- Sealer
- Lacquer
- Thinner
Let us now take you through the process of polishing raw wood. The following method applies to any kind of unfinished wood.
Sanding the area
The first step to polish raw wood is to sand the area first. Before you start the process of sanding any area, make sure that all the nails used by your carpenter in making the door are perfectly embedded. Take a sand paper and smoothen the surface to allow the polish to work. After you have smoothened the surface, there will be no bumps or uneven edges.
Applying lac dana soaked in spirit
Now, comes the technical part. To polish raw wood, you would need to buy lac dana (local people also call it laag dana) which is basically resin secreted by female lac bugs on trees. We will first give you a little background of what lac dana is. Shellac is scraped off from the trees where the female lac bugs secrete resin to build tube-like colonies. The lac insects suck the tree’s sap and excrete sticky lac constantly.
To extract lac out of raw shellac, which contains both bark shavings and lac bugs, a long tube made of canvas containing raw shellac is heated over slow fire. This liquefies the lac which seeps through the canvas tubes and is collected in a container, leaving behind bark shavings and lac bugs. The sticky liquefied shellac is then spread out in sheets to dry out. The flat sheet is then broken into flakes (lac daana) and sold in the market.
Lac dana is an expensive polish material for wood, therefore it is advised to buy lac dana in small quantities. You can get it from any paint shop or hardware store. It is dissolved in spirit or alcohol to liquefy and make it liquid shellac. Shellac is a natural primer and is used as a high-gloss varnish. To polish unfinished wooden doors, you need to buy lac dana, which are like brown grains. Soak it in alcohol until it liquefies. A single coat of lac dana is enough.
Fill the cracks with plaster of paris
Examine the door closely. Do you see any cracks or crevices? If yes, then it is time to fix the cracks before polishing the door. Fill any wood cracks with the plaster of paris mixture. Remember to achieve the desired colour of the plaster of paris that matches with your door.
You can add some brown or yellow colour to match with the natural wood colour. It should completely blend with the door’s original colour. It is also recommended to make a small amount of this plaster of paris mixture. Fill all the cracks, cover the nail heads and any depression. Then using sandpaper smoothen the surface well. The filling up of cracks and the door should be evened out.
Determine the wood’s colour
After you are done with the above process. Now, comes the part where you decide the colour for your wooden door. Do you want to keep the natural colour of the wooden door? Or would you like mahogany, oak or walnut finish to your door? If you prefer a dark tan or reddish brown colour to your door, then you will have to mix a few local colours that you can easily purchase from a local store.
To make the right colour for your door, mix either yellow colour (yellow sina), red colour (red sina, brown colour (brown sina) or black colour (black sina). You can mix a combination to achieve the desired colour. For the usual dark brown colour, you will need to mix brown sina with some black sina. Ask the dealer from the paint shop from where you will purchase the colours. He will also guide you.
Pick the right colours and mix them in kerosene oil and varnish. Make the colour once for all the doors you want to polish to achieve similar results for all the doors. If you make the colour in small batches, you won’t get the same colour on all doors. Slight variations in making the colour can change the entire look of your wooden door.
Another point to remember is that the colour should be made a day before you apply the first coat. Colour is applied using a mulmul (soft cotton muslin) cloth. Dip the cloth in the colour and apply it on the wooden door. The technique of polishing raw wood is to apply the same colour in different coats. Once the desired colour on the wooden door is achieved, you should now apply the sealer. This is one of the most important elements in polishing raw wooden furniture.
Applying Sealer
Buy a sealer from the local market and apply it on the wooden door. Remember the look of the finished wooden door depends upon the number of coats you apply. On an average around 10-15 coats are applied. Sealer is applied using a spray gun.
Once you have applied enough coats of the sealer, you should sand it again using a sandpaper of 240 grit size.
Lacquer Finish
The last step of polishing a wooden door is to apply lacquer. It all depends upon the kind of finishing you require. Whether you want a matte finish or a glossy one depends on your choice. There are both kinds of lacquer available in the market – one that gives matte finish and the other one that gives a glossy finish.
For matte finish, you would need to use two coats of the matte lacquer, while for the glossy look you will need four coats of the glossy lacquer. You will have to apply lacquer using a spray gun. Let the polish dry out on its own.
So, this brings us to an end of our guide on how to polish raw wood on your own and save a handsome amount of money otherwise spent in hiring a professional carpenter. For those who are planning to build their dream home, our detailed blog on the construction costs to build an A category 5 marla and 10 marla house in Pakistan would really help in finalizing the budget. If you haven’t bought land yet, you can take a look at these comprehensive area guides on major cities of Pakistan: Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad, Multan and Peshawar.
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