# Anyone Use Bush Oil Products?



## sreilly (May 22, 2018)

So yesterday was my 1st Woodworker Show which was about 2+ hours away in Chantilly Virginia for me. One of the interesting seminars was on finishing presented by Bill Bush, owner of Bush Products and also a master woodworker. Evidently it's been a family tgrade for generations. It was an interesting seminar in that I'm not a very accomplished finisher myself so I have much to learn. One of the points he made was using a random orbital sander (ROS) and it not working in the direction of the grain. Made sense, at least at the time. He mostly advocates for hand sanding and was demonstrating their method. What he was using was an ash raised panel door center that was like 10x18" and had the profile cut into the panel. The first thing was to create the sanding block to match that profile so he used a block of wood and placed it at the end of the long side even with the front so the profile could be traced on the end of the block. He repeated that for the top. Then using a block plane you remove as much of the waste as possible and then sand it down the rest of the way by laying a piece of 80 grit paper, grit up on the door profile and moving the block back and forth till you've matched the profile. Follow the directions for the block on the attached PDF. The other PDF is his system briefly explained. Long story short is you sand with the grain, starting at 80 grit working up to 400. Between each grit you use a natural hair paint brush to brush both the panel and the sandpaper to remove the sawdust, then progress to the next grit, and repeat till you're all the way to the 400 grit. At that point you brush again or you can use a natural hair brush attachment on your vacuum to clean. Then you use the gray Fibratex pad to sand as you did with the sandpaper to dislodge the particles, brush off, and use the white Fibratex pad as you did the gray and clean. What I saw was outstanding. First off I thought after the 400 grit paper was sued it was ready for oil but these next two steps took that to a whole new level for me. When that was finished it had a seen that I had not seen on unfinished wood before. Then the oil was liberally applied and for this demo that was about it although in real life there would have been at least 2 more coatings with sanding in between each. But after maybe 5-10 minutes of that first coat and a dry wiping with the cotton cloth it was far better than anything I had ever achieved by at least 10 fold. Keep in mind I'm as green at fine finishes as you can get so take that into account. I'm sure I've glazed over this system but the attached PDFs should get you more information. I did order the kit this morning as I wasn't convinced the cost was justifiable until I was describing the process to my wife this morning and she could see how impressed I was. When she asked me where the kit was I realized I needed to order it and find out if I could replicate the process here ad get these wonderful results.

I guess you can't really tell for yourself until you've at least given it a go. I ordered mine from Lakeshore Hardwoods but you may be able to find it closer by checking here 

So anyone familiar with these products or seen this seminar? I'm curious if you get similar results or have any input on these methods. Maybe someone will get something useful from this posting..


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## Multiwood (Feb 24, 2013)

Steve I have sat thru Busch’s seminar and have bought and used his products. I did have very good results but when I used everything 
up I never used his products again. I have just as good finishes results with Danish Oil than Poly, lacquer, or urethane and much cheaper.


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## Nickp (Dec 4, 2012)

Steve...excellent writeup and review...


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