Antique brown mahogany finish

Mahogany wood is very popular in the furniture industry. Mahogany wood is widely used as raw material to make many furniture products. Various models and kind of furniture products can be made with mahogany wood. Many finishing model can be generated from the mahogany furniture to furniture products with nice looked an interesting appearance.

In this article we want to share a finishing process to produce antique brown mahogany color. It is a finishing with mahogany brown color with antique looked

mahogany wood furniture

Here is the finishing process step by step.

• Application of sap stains and equalizer stain.

Mahogany wood naturally has variation base color, ranging from light color at the sap wood, to the reddish brown at the heartwood. The color variation should be anticipated to obtain the uniform final finishing color. A process to uniform the wood base color is needed at the earliest finishing step to produce the uniform final finishing. The color alignment is done with the application of sap stains and equalizer stains. The brown sap stain is sprayed to the sapwood to bring the light color of the sap wood to be brown as the heartwood color.
While a green equalizer stain is sprayed to kill the red wood part. The green color will equalize the red color to make brown color. If the application of sap stain and equalizer stain is well done, then an even an uniform wood base color is resulted. 

• Application of body stain

Body stain is the stain that is applied to the entire surface to form the desired finishing color. In here we use a toner brown stain to make a brown finish mahogany color.

A brown toner stain is wet sprayed to overall surface evenly.

Wait for several minutes until the stain layer is completely dry.

• Sealer application.

The next finishing process is the sealer coating. This sealer layer serves to protect the stain and form a layer of film on the finishing.

Spray I layer coat of sealer evenly to the wood surface, wait until the sealer is dry. Usually it needs about 30 minutes to let the sealer dry.

Make sure the sealer layer us dry and then sand the sealer. The sanding for the first sealer is purposed to cut the wood fibers that are stiffen as the result of the sealer coating. Sand the entire sealer surface until all the wood fibers are cut off and a smooth surface is resulted. Use sandpaper with # 280 or # 320 grade for the sanding sealer process.

• Glaze application.

The application of glaze means to fill and color inside the wood pore and grain to produce the more live and interesting wood finishing. A glaze with dark brown color (van dyke brown glaze) is chosen to produce the dark brown finishing with the antique impression.

Brush the glaze to the layer surface sealer evenly and to fill and coloring the inside of pore, grain, crevices and inside the carving. Make sure the glaze fills the wood grain, pore, inside of the carving and layering the surface evenly, and then do the highlights to the glaze. Wipe off glaze layer at the some parts to enhance the wood grain and to make the “hangs up” on the crevices, carvings and to make more live appearance of brown color to the finishing layer.
Wait about 1 hour until the glaze layer is completely dry.

•  Sealer application.

Make sure this glaze layer dry and then spray 1 layer of sealer to coat glaze. This sealer is needed to protect the color and appearance of finishing that has been generated. Spray 1 layer of wet sealer coat and wait until the sealer coating is dry.
It takes about 30 minutes to let the sealer dry, then sand the sealer. The second layer of sealer is usually smooth because there are no more wood fibers on wood surface. However, the sanding is needed to remove the orange peel and a rough surface caused by the particles of the glaze. Use sandpaper # 280 or # 320 grade and do the sanding evenly to allover surface.

• Dry brush glaze

Dry brush glaze is done to make the antique impression to the finishing. Brush the glaze to the entire surface with a “dry brush” technique. Make sure the glaze fills the inside carvings and continue the brushing to darken the overall finishing color.
Wait few minutes to allow the glaze to dry.

• The application of top coat.

The top coat is the last layer in the finishing process. Top coat is the last layer to protect the color and looked of the finishing and also to form the gloss. In this mahogany finish we use low gloss finish. A 10 sheen top coat is needed to make the antique dark brown mahogany finish. Spray 1 layer coat evenly to the entirely surface and wait for about 30 minutes to let the top coat dry. 

antique brown mahogany finish

Check the surface, if the smooth surface finish is obtained then the finishing process is finish. But if the rough surface is obtained then we need to re coat the finish layer. Sand the top coat layer with # 320 and then spray the second top coat layer.