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A beautiful dining room featuring the natural wood look

5 Steps to Create a Natural Wood Look for Your Next Woodworking Project

UPDATED: June 2025 You have probably noticed the trending popularity of the “natural wood look” or “raw wood finish,” where the final result is a beautiful piece of furniture that looks as if it is raw wood without a single coat of finish. The challenge is, even an ultra-clear coating or lacquer on light woods […]

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EM6500 WB Bright White Lacquer

The Top-5 Water Based Wood Finishing Myths…BUSTED!

UPDATED: May 2025 I’m guessing you’re no stranger to searching Google for occasional help when using water based wood finishes. To be sure, there is a lot of great information on the Web. But there is also a lot of MIS-information. Even from so-called “experts.” At best, their statements are “mostly right” (in specific situations).

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The 7 Types of Water-Based Wood Finish: A Comprehensive Guide

Updated May 2025 High quality wood finishes are an essential aspect of woodworking, providing protection, enhancing beauty, and ensuring the longevity of wood surfaces. With various options available, it can be overwhelming to choose the right types of wood finishes for your project. In this blog post, we’ll explore different types of wood finishes, with

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Pro Advice for Finishing Oily Woods

Many woodworkers consider woods with a high oil and rosin content to be among the most beautiful materials available, but finishing oily woods has historically been a challenge to accomplish properly and safely. While the correct surface preparation of the selected wood species is important, the methods of preparation come from various schools of thought.

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Working with Water Based Wood Finishes in Cold Weather Months

Updated: January 2025 Any time there’s a stretch of cold weather, we usually receive a fresh batch of calls and emails about concerns related to cold-weather applications. So, now is a great time to remind everyone that water-based coatings are typically more sensitive to cold weather than oil- or solvent-based coatings and extra attention should

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Water-Based Wood Stains are available in a variety of deep, rich colors

The Simple, Safe and Stunning Way to Use Water-Based Wood Stains

This is going to be a strange opening sentence for this post, but to be perfectly honest, I often steer away from using ANY kind of wood stain if I don’t have to; this includes water-based wood stains. Let me explain: See, I love the look of natural wood in all its variations, and for

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How to Safely Clean Projects Finished with Target Coatings

As a follow-up to my article on using CL100 Crosslinker, now is a great time to answer a related question, namely: What is the best way for you and/or your customers to SAFELY clean spills, grease, dirt, etc., from a Target Coatings-finished project? It’s a related question because, even though CL100 Crosslinker increases our coatings’

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How to Use a Crosslinker with Water-Based Finishes

My last article explored the value and purpose for using Target Coatings SA5 Brush and Spray Retarder, especially in warm and/or dry weather environments.  For this post, I’ll explain how and when you might want to use the other additive Target Coatings offers, CL100 water-based crosslinker.  Part 1: What is a Crosslinker (vs. a Catalyst)

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