How to Stain and Clear Coat a Wood Handrail | Smooth, Durable Finish with HVLP Sprayer

All right, I'm going to talk about a handrail. One of the accent pieces I did, I believe it's like a hemlock or I believe it's pine. I'm not sure. I think think it's hemlock. So, it's a piece of wood, solid piece of wood. Uh they cut and did corners on it. It was installed. You know, there's multiple options you can do with that thing, including, you know, painting it and staining it and some other things. The customer just wanted it stained. You know, I took a Minwax early American stain and it's a quick dry stain. Brought it in in here. The very first thing I did, I sanded it with my, you know, Echisan 3x4 sander and an ultra fine sponge, 1/2 in sponge and a handrail that's got contoured edges, routed edges. It's super fast, super easy to sand, you know, with a 3x4 sander. Plus, it's hooked to my hepac. You're not creating a lot of dust. I put it on my saw horses. to make sure I put down two uh cardboard shields down, you know, so um it would protect it while I'm sanding it, rolling it over and stuff, and any type of vibration wouldn't scratch it. So, set it on there, sanded it uh pretty quick and then then I began uh the staining process. I used the conditioner first. So, it's a soft wood. any type of soft woods, you know, hemlock and pine, you know, are very notorious for being blotchy when you stain them, having dark spots and light spots all over them. Anytime you do any type of staining, you should use a conditioner first. So, I brushed on a conditioner, you know, on the entire handrail, then um let that set for a while, let it set for, uh to penetrate. And a conditioner is kind of like if you smell it, it smells like paint thinner, like mineral spirits. So, it's like kind of like saturating the wood before and it's allowing the stain to not penetrate so deeply in other areas and not so deeply in other areas. It kind of just pre-saturates the wood with a chemical that uh makes it so you get an even stain. Now, read uh the TDS or read the directions on your conditioner cuz uh the conditioner when you apply it, some give you specifications on when you need to apply your stain. So, you want to make sure you apply it within that window of opportunity. Say if it was 8 hours, you know that you need to apply the stain, you came back next day, applied the stain, it's probably going to be blotchy. So, you would need to recondition it. So, I brushed on my conditioner, went off, was doing some other things, then I um came back about an hour later, brushed on the stain. One of the things about the conditioner gives you a lot of working time with the stain. I was able to brush the stain on, you know, the whole entire piece here and then got a clean rag, wiped that whole thing off uh completely. I wiped it off completely and then I'll let it set and dry according to specifications on the can and then I took it outside to spray it with my um with my Rener 2K Poly 851. Now I took it outside and uh to spray it outside. I was using my Apollo Precision 6 HVL speed sprayer. I could have sprayed it right here, but simultaneously I was working on this project right here also. I sprayed this thing twice. It was completely saturated, you know, with the product um scuff tough. And I was a little bit worried about like the the dust created by doing my handrail that the dust would lift in the air and settle down on this and mess up that. So I took it outside, set it out in the sun where it would dry, you know, just like fast. And so I was able to do I think I actually did five coats on it. You I think I did um four coats on it. sanded in between coats with the ultra fine ecosil sponge just really quickly. It just felt like absolute glass. It wasn't quite dry. Tried to move it into the garage too quickly. I set it down on some trim and it rolled off the trim and so had to take it back outside, resand it and shoot it again. But it just came out absolutely perfect. So, you know, that's kind of what it looks like doing a handrail. I do like you you have the options of using water-based products, um, urethane type products, lacquer type products, varnishes. You know, to me, you know, I I don't like chemical type products that are flammable. So, I don't like lacquers, you know, especially, I don't want to work with anything flammable. I really like water-based products. I like water-based 2K poly urethanes and um, specifically Rener 851. So that's what I shot it with. It dries uh as fast or faster than a lacquer. It sands as easy or easier than a lacquer and uh and then it's more significantly more durable than a lacquer. So highly recommend it. Vener uh 2K poly 851. So, there's a little bit about talking about my process doing a wood handrailing that you'll probably run into on any type of house that has, you know, a second