Re: Wood refinishing question
item 1 is a red cedar deck, about 300 sq/ft. I tried all thebest stains and waterproofers, nothing seems to last, I figured some soaked in varathane should get me more than 2-3 months of looking nice. heavy use, lots of rain and snow
item 2 is a north european hardwood gunstock, birchwood?? coated in some sort of shellac or other clearcoat type finish
IMHO, forget trying to keep the cedar deck looking nice. And you are right, shellacs, varnishes, varethanes and various polyeurathanes will just not work in an outdoor environment, with that soft porous wood. That is precisely the reason I tore mine out and replaced it with 24" colored concrete slabs. If you are going to try anything to keep it from peeling and to keep a decent color, I would use one of the various stains.
On the other hand for the hardwood stock, if you wanted to add color to it, use an oil based stain and some gunstock oil, like tung oil. You can really rub in a butt smooth finish with that. If you did not want to color it, I would use a couple of coats penetrating epoxy then coat it with a polyeurathane. You can rub out the poly, give it a couple of coats and end up with a smooth, tough satin finish.
