/diy/ - Do It Yourself

>>1665266
For softwoods I fucking hate staining; never liked the way it looks, with or without conditioner. I'd rather use dyes, or any of the finishing oils like tung or linseed oil. All three are shit in the durability aspect though and so you still need to use a protective finish. And pretty much all protectors suck ass on softwoods for they dent so fucking easily. Still provided you aren't dancing on the fucking thing with heels you should be alright. For protective finishes it's either 2k polyurethane, epoxy or polycarbonate, fuck conversion varnish only retarded boomers still use it. I lean more towards polycarbonate for ease of application and the least toxic out of all of them. Epoxy is a time consuming often unnecessary pain in the shithole if you're doing anything more than flat tops. 2k polyurethane is a little less time consuming than epoxy for you can easily spray it and is more forgiving when mixing the two components together, but still probably the most dangerous of the finishes second only to conversion varnish. In the end all of them are hard abrasion resistant finishes that will serve you well for as long as they last. However if you ever need to repair a certain area or remove them for whatever the reason they will be a pain in the dick. Now if you are tap dancing on whatever you're building with stilettos go with a hardwax finish like rubio monocoat or pallmann magic oil, the shit is flexible, easy to apply, waterproof, pretty durable and unlike the others very easy to repair, it is not urine proof however so don't pee in it fool. Another thing is that you can not make it glossy it only finishes in one form and that form is matte. Good luck faggot.