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Our Exceptional Finish - two exceptional choices

Durable, beautiful, earth friendly water based 

After almost a decade or searching for an exceptionally durable finish, we finally succeeded in 2012.  A water based urethane professional spray finish is just what we've been looking for.  Just as beautiful as an oil finish with none of the drawbacks.  This finish is used for finishing hardwood floors, so it's more than durable for our furniture.  No maintenance needed.  Once it's been applied and is dry, you don't need to think about finishing again.  -  That is, unless you some how scratch or ding your piece.  If you do, no worries, it's not necessary to completely sand down and respray from scratch.  You can apply this finish with a small brush or rag, and in every case so far you'll never see a sign of the accident.

Now, for one the biggee;  It's super earth friendly.  Our planet smiles when we choose water based finishes over oil, and we do too.

Now, you may wonder if this finish is so great, why are so few furniture makers/manufacturers using it.  Here there are two reasons/excuses that we see: 

1)  The product cost is over 300% more.  A gallon of oil based finish might be around $25, where this costs almost $80.

2)  But there's another, larger additional expense to the process.  There are much higher labor costs associated with this durable, earth friendly finish.  You see, hand sanding between coats is required.  This typically more than doubles the labor costs involved in the process of water based finishing.

We are committed to designing and making the best one of a kind, functional works of art we can.  We work daily to do this in a people and earth friendly way, and with new forward thinking designs and processes. We aren't  trying to (and couldn't if we wanted to) compete with overseas mass production.

Historical & beautiful hand rubbed tung oil finish 

For almost a decade we've lovingly finished each rwf piece with a traditional, historical hand rubbed oil process.  This hand rubbed oil process has been used for over 1000 years.    During China's  Song Dynasty it was used to waterproof ships.  Confucius wrote about it's use around 400 B.C.

We don't use the historical raw tung oil, but a variation and mixture that has much better drying and appearance qualities.    We hand rub the oil on, allow it to sit for a few minutes, then hand rub off a minimum of 3 coats of oil.  This oil soaks into the wood, darken's the wood very little, and best of all - allows you to "touch and feel the grain".  Communicating with the soul of the tree - I don't know, but it's quite special and wonderful.

There are two drawbacks to using this hand rubbed oil finish. First is very simple, but a commitment of a lifetime maintenance.  Most thoroughly enjoy this process of applying/rubbing a coat as needed, whenever it begins to look or feel the least bit dry.  The second drawback is durability.  You'll need to treat your new art piece with the respect it deserves.  Certainly great for dining tables, but no ice glasses sitting directly on the table for any length of time.  Spilling liquids and not cleaning up immediately, could leave a mark.