Varnishing wooden bases

[Venom7]

Hi.
I recently bought some 2\" wooden rounds in oak and pine, to mount my finished miniatures on. The miniatures will be mounted on a 40mm GW circular base, which will be attached on to the wooden round. I just want some tips on varnishing the wood, as I have never done any wood varnishing before, and need some sound advice before I start. So any tips or brands I should use (I live in UK) would help out.
Thanks in advance

 

[Dragon Forge Design]

Well first off get some sand paper and give them a good sanding. Start with 120 grit and work your way up to 320 grit. Get out all the scratches and stuff. Make sure to sand with the grain and not against it.

Once sanded you need to decide if you want to leave the wood natural or stain it. If you wish to stain them then pick a color you like and stain them and let them dry overnight.

To finish them Id go out and get two cans of material for sealing them. One get a can of sanding sealer, it seals the wood and give your top coat something nice to adhear to. Give them a coat of sanding sealer and let dry. Carefully take some 400 grit sand paper and nmake sure that coat is smooth. make sure not to sand through. The seal with 2-3 coats of your top coat.

I myself prefer cans of spray on finish than brush on, drys fast and easy to use. I also use lacqure instead of varnish. Varnish takes a very long time to dry.

 

[QuietiManes]

You may want to pour some boiling hot water over the wood to raise the grains then sand those down, repeat. So do it twice. Before applying the first stain or varnish. Allow it to dry completely before continuing. If you use a sealer before staining it will help even out the stain over the varying grain and what not too.

This will hopefullly give you a nicer finish in the end. Makes it easier to sand between coats without going through the first couple layers as well.

Any varnish, polyurethane, wax, whatever you find at your local building center will work fine (where you\'d buy house paint or bathroom fixtures). You can get most tinted if you only want a slight colour change to your wood otherwise stain is probably better. I\'d suggest wipe on polyurethane if you can get it, just for ease of use. Bubbles can be a problem with brush on so dont shake the can or mix around the varnish with the paint brush. I\'ve never used a spray. Whatever you get the instructions on the side of the can will let you know what\'s what.

 

[Einion]

Hi Venom, my advice is sort of a mixture of the above. If you\'re lucky the bases may be smooth enough that you can skip any rougher sanding and go straight to finer-grit paper, maybe P220; don\'t bother going much above P400, not worth the effort for sanding the wood itself, although you can use much finer grits to sand a finish. If they\'re very smooth already just a quick degrease with meths or rubbing alcohol could be enough.

I would suggest you use wet \'n\' dry, not normal sandpaper as you can rinse it clean in water when you\'re done and it\'s usually much better quality anyway. You could also use 0000 steel wool for smoothing, this is particularly good for cutting back sanding sealer or varnish to prepare for the next coat. Because these are rounds sanding by hand is going to be a little tricky - ideally this is done when the wood is still mounted to the lathe.

For the finish you could use shellac, button polish or any good polyurethane varnish (even teak oil or boiled linseed oil might work fine), but because your bases are round a spray-on finish is a very good alternative if you can find one, Plasti-Kote maybe?

Einion