Finish for table top

I'm building a table with a top out of recycled floorboards and legs out of other reclaimed wood. The floorboards are a mixture of mainly Australian native red hardwoods. The table is done except for the finish.

I tried some Kunos Natural Oil Sealer on the bottom of the legs, but don't like the effect. It brings too much of the red colour out for my liking. I like the way the wood looks without any finish, i.e. quite understated and subtle. Is there a way to apply a finish and keep the subtle, understated look of the unfinished wood?

I prefer natural/non-chemical finishes.

(Someone mentioned Shellac, would that work?)

Yes you can do with the oil finish. It create natural looked that is match with the appearance that you want. But since you don't want the red color you have to kill the red of the wood with the green stain before you apply your oil finish.
Shellac will make film built and yellow brown color, and it will looked as a finished wood.

You can view it in my web pages below:

Hey Adrian:

For shellac you might want to consider when you're doing with the table. It doesn't take heat or moisture too well.

I'd suggest you try a beeswax finish. It's a low sheen rich lustre finish and doesn't add warmth to the color of the wood like shellac can. (unless you use a bleached variety). The subtle waxy finish should further enhance the understated beauty of your wood.

If you don't mind the un-naturalness, you could also try a satin polyurethane finish. You might be impressed with the results.

Kaisergrendel and wisno: Thanks for the suggestions.

In the end I used beeswax on the legs - looks much better than the Kunos Oil.

Decided to do a test patch for with Kunos on the bottom of the table top, and it actually looked pretty good, much better than on the legs. So went with that for the table top.

The result looks great. Have been sitting (working) at the table all day today and can't wipe the grin off my face!

So where are the pics ? !!

I like seeing things made from recycled materials.

cheers

Wet the wood down with water and that will show you the minimum colour you will get with most finishes.

White shellac won't darken the timber any more than the water does. Hard Shellac has a very high resistance to marking from heat, water, alcohol, etc. and won't change the colour any more than wetting with water.

Wax will keep the surface close to the raw timber colour but will mark very easily. Even waxes like Traditional Wax which has a very high carnauba wax content will mark reasonably easy compared to a surface coating. It may be easily repaired but it also needs constant upkeep as do pretty well all wax fiishes, especially beeswax.

Hope this is of some help.

Cheers - Neil :U