After spending hours planning and working hard to build your own wine rack, your wine rack certainly deserves a great finish! The finish is the final step in a long series of creative decisions, and should not be taken lightly. Though it’s the last thing applied, it’s usually the first thing about a wine rack that captures our attention. Unfortunately, while most wine rack plans will show you how to build a wine rack, they will not include intricate details about this final, yet crucial step.

Wood finishing is an art that’s been around for 7,000 years. Finishes are used to beautify and protect wood. They penetrate into the wood’s pores, and bring out the depth and beauty of the grain patterns. They enhance the natural color of the wood wine rack and offer protection against moisture and abrasions.

Exactly how the wood is treated will impact the overall beauty of the piece — usually quite dramatically. After building wine racks, the first step to wood finishing is the surface preparation.

Materials may include:
Scrapers — gooseneck scrapers, cabinet scraper, etc.
Planes — block planes, etc.
Flexible sanding strip
Carpenter’s tape
Sandpaper, various grits
Sanding block
Abrasive pads
“0000″ (extra-fine) steel wool
Raking light
Protective gloves
Eye protection
Respirator

Surface Preparation
· Surface preparation actually begins as you’re building your project. Small things like pre-sanding parts (especially in tight corners), protecting joints with tape during glue-up and removal of excess-glue squeeze-out all make the job of finishing easier.
· In the process of assembly, once the glue has dried remove any dried glue-squeeze-out with a hand scraper and/or sandpaper.
· To properly prep wood, you’ll likely need a variety of hand tools such as chisels for cleaning up tight corners, block-planes for leveling joints, cabinet scrapers for flattening surfaces and a variety of hand-scrapers to help bring out the natural beauty of the grain.
· When prepping sculpted curves such as in a cove-cut, use a gooseneck scraper to remove saw-marks and high spots. Another useful tool in this type of application is a wood dowel wrapped in sandpaper. Sand the curve with appropriate grit until you reach a fine finish with 220-grit.
· To shape and sand large curves, use a flexible sanding strip. You can make one of these by simply attaching sandpaper to flexible, thin strips of wood using double-stick tape. The key is to get the entire curved surface blended to a common smoothness.
· When prepping textured surfaces, begin by lightly sanding the wood with 320-grit paper to knock off the sharp edges. Then buff the surface with a synthetic abrasive pad. Finally, burnish the surface using 0000-grade steel wool.
· Another useful tip for finishing a surface is to examine it closely under a raking light. The angle and intensity of the light will reveal subtle imperfections as well as high and low spots on the surface.
· After prepping and sanding, clean away dust with a vacuum, or (if you have a compressor) blow it away using compressed air.
· At this point, you’ll need to consider if you want to continue by raising the grain. This may be especially important if you plan to use a water-based finish or color treatment, or for any piece that might be exposed to moisture. The process basically minimizes future grain swelling. Once you have raised the grain and applied the finish, it will prevent you from sanding through the color.
· To pre-raise the grain by spraying on clean water to soak the entire surface. After the water sets for a minute or so, wipe away the excess. Allow the wood to dry for a few hours. Sand the surface with 320-grit sandpaper. Remove any dust and burnish the entire surface with steel wool. The steel wool gets down into the pores of the wood and removes minute rough fibers.

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