Color in the wood finishing

Color and its measurement.

Color is very important thing in the finishing industry. One purpose of a finishing process is to make a special color and appearance of an object. It is very reasonable if finishing process is always associated with color. The control to the color is very important in the finishing industry. The color may be the most often found problem in the wood finishing.
While in the industrial finishing materials, the color stability is very important.

To help the process of controlling the color, then there are measuring tools is created to help check and measure the color. There are 2 kinds of tools that can be used to check the color: the colorimeter and spectrophotometer.

Colorimeter.

 
Colorimeter was used to see the color difference between objects one with another one. This tool is more suitable to analyze and help the adjustment to the objects with a little color difference. This tool is widely used in the finishing industry material manufacturer to ensure that the resulting stain is always stable and have the same color every time. This tool also can be used to measure and check the color in the yellowing test or other discoloration in a finish panel. An object that is measured by the tool is illuminated with a light and then light reflected by the object is analyzed and measured wavelength. From the results of this analysis will be obtained by measuring the length of the result if there are differences.

Spectrophotometer.

This tool works in a different way. This tool can be used to analyze the color of certain objects and be used to help make analysis for the formulation to match the color. This tool is more complex than the colorimeter. This tool can be used in the finishing material industry to analyze color sample and then make a formulation of the mixture of pigments to reach that color. This tool is more useful for matching color on solid colors which the color. For the transparent color when the color is obtained by the blending of the base color and the stain color this tool cannot help much. The wood variation will always affect the measurement reading and make the result is not helpful anymore.

 checking finishing color on the furniture with color panel

Checking color in the wood finishing.

In the wood furniture finishing industry, the color measurement instrument is never used to check the color. Color and the finishing appearance of furniture that is highly determined by the factors of substrate such as wood pores and grain make the  uses of measuring devices is impossible. The color checking is always done by visual observation. It is very reasonable method since the furniture products are household products that will be used by humans. Although the color has to be maintained for its consistency, but the furniture products does not need a very precision same color. The furniture with similar appearance and color which can be well paired in a room is sufficient to meet the standard color match in the furniture products. The checking of finishing color is always done by human. For a big furniture manufacturer who does the finishing process on furniture in big amount, the main tools used for checking and controlling the finishing color is the color panel and the sample. Panel color with the desired color and quality of finishing is a very effective tool to control the finishing result. Every product has to be compared and checked with the color panel to make sure its color is correct. For complex products the panel is sometimes not enough to represent the finishing appearance, since that a sample of finish product should be made and used as a tool measure to check the quality and color of finishing. The finish product and color panel is very important in the wood finishing industry, since they will be used s a reference how the finishing should be. In the big volume product the sample and color panel must be approved as standard production before the production is begin.
In fact every person has a different sensitivity. The way people see the color is influenced by the sense of the person. Therefore, it is often if every people have a different perception of a color. As a finishing people, when we do matching color, then we need to make a good communication with our customer. With good communication and eliminate our ego, then we will be able to see the finishing color and appearances with our customer's viewpoint. By this way we can start to give the best finishing looked according to our customer instead of our mind.