The First Shelving Piece or Bench!

In my last post, I mentioned I’m working on my second shelving piece of the same design and since all my fans requested a post on the first unit I made, I thought I’d follow-up today with a post on it. 

Below are some images of the peice, final sanded and ready for finishing.

I’m loving the dramatic shadows from the natural light streaming in from the old factory windows at the wood shop, the piece looks sharp and I’m feeling like I know what I’m doing.

The raw sanded look of the ash is so nice, I wish it would look just like this with the finish on it. I final sanded to 220 grit, I think its recommended to only sand to 120 with the Osmo Raw finish that I applied but that felt really rough to me still. Also, I haven’t carved the dimple detail into the exposed tenons on the top shelf because I was in a rush to get this piece home and from what I understand with oil finishes like Osmo’s it can easily be touched-up so I’m planning to carve and smooth the dimples and re-apply the finish

 Here is the unit at home.

I had to get it home before Christmas because my kids would need somewhere to play Mario Kart with the new Switch they got. Messy cables everywhere! I'm going to fix that.

I used Osmo Raw and applied two coats. No sanding in between coats and I buffed with 0000 steel wool after. I think the finish turned out really good. I’m still not sure if I like the look of the raw finish since it still makes the wood look wet. I am going to test some of the Rubio finishes that everyone is really jazzed about at the wood shop (Hamilton Craft Studios). I’m going to make some samples of the Rubio colour treatment for Intense Black and Nordic White. Then I’ll apply the Osmo Raw finish on after and see how that looks. Oil finishes are super expensive so I’m not going to finish coat in Rubio since I have the Osmo already. I don’t really like mucking around with colour tints because I think they can either look too trendy or even like fake wood but lets give it a go!