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Wood Finishing Safety: A practical guide

Navigating Health and Safety When Wood Finishing: A Practical Guide

Updated: October 2025 As a finisher with regular contact with potentially hazardous chemicals, I hope you question the wood finishing safety differences between water based coatings and their traditional solvent based counterparts, particularly concerning their performance and their impact on your health and the environment.  In my earlier years, I underestimated the significance of these […]

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How to Achieve a Flawless Finish on Kitchen Cabinets

Whether you are a seasoned professional or a dedicated DIY finisher, achieving a flawless kitchen cabinet finish requires more than just the right spray equipment. Kitchen cabinetry—and other interior woodwork—faces daily exposure to heat, moisture, grease, and frequent cleaning. Choosing the right finishing system is critical to ensuring both beauty and durability. In the following

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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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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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