Non Yellowing Finish

[Coop]

I’m sure this has been discussed before and at the time, I saw no reason to pay attention. I will be building a piece from maple and have applied my tried and true ARS to some milled scrap pieces with some yellowing effect. I realized that over time, wood will lighten or darken, regardless of the finish but I would like, at least, to get a head start on the process. I’ve read on Internet intelligence, that water based finishes provide the best non-yellowing results, with less alcohol resistance. This won’t be a bar top. Anyone have good past experience? 

[wtnhighlander]

I've used General Finishes High Performance with good, non-yellow results. Water-borne finish certainly has different working properties for application, but it seems to be quite durable.

[BonPacific]

I'll second GF's water based poly. I've mostly used it on high-traffic items for my office and it has put up with plenty of abuse.

[JohnG]

I used GF HP on my wife’s sewing desk a few years ago and it has held up well. 

[Coop]

Thanks guys. I had forgotten that the GF HP was water based. Do you guys raise the grain and sand prior  to applying this? 

[wtnhighlander]

@Coop, I have only used it over paint or stain, so no grain-raising. I don't see it penetrating the wood like oil does, and I imagine the moisture would swell the wood fibers a bit, so grain-raising is probably wise for a bare wood application.

[Ronn W]

I like to apply shellac (Zinsler Universal Sanding sealer) to the bear wood and then sand lightly with 400 Grit.  Most times I appy 2 coats and sand each coat.  Then apply whatever finish I want.  The shellac dries fast so I can put on the 2 coats, sand and apply the first finish coat in the same day.  With the shellac I find that I can apply 1 less coat of the final finish because the wood is already sealed.    Also, the shellac will help with the contrast (pop) of the grain.  Waterborne finishes don't do that so well.

[Chestnut]

21 hours ago, Ronn W said:

I like to apply shellac (Zinsler Universal Sanding sealer) to the bear wood and then sand lightly with 400 Grit.  Most times I appy 2 coats and sand each coat.  Then apply whatever finish I want.  The shellac dries fast so I can put on the 2 coats, sand and apply the first finish coat in the same day.  With the shellac I find that I can apply 1 less coat of the final finish because the wood is already sealed.    Also, the shellac will help with the contrast (pop) of the grain.  Waterborne finishes don't do that so well.

This is a great method but it depends on the ideal outcome. On all white maple even the seal coat of shellac can leave some yellowing.

Coop when doing WB poly i almost always raise the grain and sand smooth. The finish goes on so fast that even with this extra step i'm still done finishing days before I would have been using an OB poly.

[Coop]

This wood is some that I got from Spanky a couple of years ago and has some tiger figure and has way more dark wood than white. I don’t know if the dark is considered heart or sap in maple? My plan is for the side panels and door frames to be made from this. I would like to find some white maple for the legs and the drawer fronts will be made from a nice white curly maple board, also from Spanky. The top will be walnut. 

[Chestnut]

3 hours ago, Coop said:

I don’t know if the dark is considered heart or sap in maple?

The white of maple is the sap wood. So the darker wood is heart wood. Heart wood maple can be very pretty, it just requires a pretty large tree to get consistent heart wood. Maple trees typically have a lot of sap wood compared to species like walnut.