After much arduous searching, I've found it, my Xanadu, my Shangri-la, the sine qua non of varnish. And all the time it was available right at my little local Ace Hardware store.
Some background: My preference for finishing and refinishing wood, when appropriate, is regular old oil-based varnish. Hate polyurethane; don't have spray equipment for lacquer (which I used when I worked on guitars). I've been nursing a quart can of McCloskey varnish for about
10 years now, and it's getting depleted. So I started looking around for something to replace it with.I knew what I wanted. McCloskey no longer exists as a brand; they were bought by Cabot (part of the Valpar "family"), and I found what looked like the equivalent product, their gloss varnish:
I called every single local paint store here in the East Bay. The best I could get was an offer to order the stuff, and even that turned out to be impractical (their distributor couldn't get it, or I'd have to order
10 cans of it, etc., etc.)Finally found a store in San Francisco that had the stuff, and even then I had to convince the store staff that they *did* have it, and then they expressed surprise, and had only one can. So I bought it, something like $20.
The stuff turned out to be pure shit.
I used it the other day on a desktop I'm making for a client, stained birch plywood. I put on the first coat in the morning. It looked OK, so I went out to work and left it to dry. When I came back and checked it about 8 hours later, the stuff was still tacky, and it had glopped and coagulated and orange-peeled like crazy.
A little while ago while exploring what has to be the greatest Ace Hardware store of them all around here (Pagano's in Alameda), I found a little 1/2 pint can of some varnish under Ace's brand, simply called "solvent-based varnish". They had nothing larger, so I bought it. Used it on my latest refinishing project (a 100-year-old wooden view camera, my Rochester Optical Co. "Universal"). It worked beautifully. But since I had so little of it, I was guarding it jealously. There certainly wasn't enough for my 26x64" desktop.
So I took the little can over to my little local Ace, Ellis Ace here in Oakland, and asked them if they could order me a quart can. Well, they actually had several of them in stock! (The quart was only $9, less than half what I paid for that Cabot crap.) So I took one, and used it yesterday on my desktop. (It's item # 276A111, Ace 16385.)
Beautiful results. Just beautiful.
This stuff does exactly what one wants it to do. It brushes on smoothly, builds up quickly, stays open and liquid long enough to move it around and correct any drips, thick or thin spots (you can easily pick out hairs or other foreign objects with your bare fingers, then brush over the spot). And best of all, after applying, it lays down as flat as an Illinois cornfield. Blessedly, shimmeringly flat. It's an absolute joy to work with. The exact opposite of something like "brushing lacquer" (now there's a contradiction in terms if I ever heard one!), which drives me nuts trying to work to get it flat without brushstrokes in the alotted 50-millisecond time period. Or polyurethane, with its inauthentic, plasticky-looking surface.
For those who are searching for a good wood finishing solution where a high-gloss surface is appropriate, I highly recommend this stuff.