How to Finish the Finish with Briwax

How to properly care for your furniture . . .

Wood has 3 enemies:  #1 one enemy is water, #2 is light, (especially ultra violet, caused by the sun) and #3 is the abuse; scratches, dents, fingerprints, spills, burns, etc., caused by humans or their pets.

To properly care for your furniture you need to simply “finish the finish”. If you have read our post on, “ How to select the right product to maintain your furniture”, you have been to the store and purchased a can of Briwax.  All other furniture polishes will evaporate fairly quickly and basically do nothing for your treasured furniture.

Using Briwax on your furniture will perform several important functions and you may see only a few with your own eyes. The first thing that you will see is that the inherent solvent in Briwax is cleaning all the fingerprints and sticky things off the surface. You may also notice that the “tired” look your piece has (this is called oxidation ) will be gone. You may also notice that most of the minor scratches you could see have suddenly disappeared. This is the natural beeswax filling in the depressions and blending them into the finished surface. What you will not see is Briwax filling in any cracks or voids in the original finish. A good example of this is the finish wrapped around a 90-degree edge. There is very little finish at this point and it will wear through eventually. Wiping up a spill with a wet cloth in this area will allow the water to enter under the finish and leave a watermark and cause the finish to rise up. By applying Briwax to your piece you can fill in these voids and add years to the life of your furniture. In fact, if properly cared for, your furniture will outlive you.

If you are unsure of what color of Briwax to purchase I always suggest Briwax Light Brown. (See the article, “Briwax Colors…suggestions on how to use them”.) Light Brown has a tinge of raw umber in the wax and if you waxed your hand you could not tell it was there. My own guestimate is that Light Brown will handle about 90-95% of any pieces that you may have.  For instance, if you have a very dark piece with a scratch, Light Brown may not hide the scratch adequately. This would be the time to have a can of Briwax Dark Brown handy. Nothing is ruined of course but you may want to pick up a can with a darker colorant. And you will not have to redo the entire piece, simply wax the scratch with a darker color and it will all blend together perfectly.

I want to show you an example of how Briwax can transform a pretty old and oxidized piece. Your own furniture will probably never look this worn & tired.

This is a piece of driftwood that I found on the beach in the early 1990’s. When I saw it I knew how I wanted to use it. I waxed one side with Briwax Light Brown and left the other side in its natural state.

Briwax will work well on almost any finish be it paint, varnish, lacquer, oiled, polyurethane or wax.

Some things to remember, when using Briwax.

Always use Briwax sparingly. A little goes a long way!

• Clear Briwax cannot hide a scratch.
• Give Briwax a minute or two to dry (this is the solvent evaporating).
• Buff Briwax out with a clean dry cloth.
• Every time you rewax with Briwax you will remove the old wax, so you always have a fresh new finish.
• The more you wax your furniture the prettier it will get. The hand rubbing that you do to the piece causes it to take on a museum quality finish.
• Do not use Briwax on linoleum.

Please look thru some of the older posts here on the blog and you may get some great ideas for your own home. Also, be sure to check out some of links you will like and see how a lot of professionals use Briwax on floors, plastered walls, ceramics and painted pieces.

We hope this article has been helpful to you and your furniture.

Looking to buy Briwax?  Use this link: BUY Briwax NOW!

Or if you would like find out more about Briwax for your business, read more on our website:  Briwax-TRG.com.

Briwax will turn into a liquid in hot weather from sitting in a hot delivery truck all day.  This in no way diminishes the quality of the product.  Simply allow the container to come to room temperature to return to a paste form.  You may hear Briwax sloshing around in the can, don’t panic – pop it into the refrigerator – like butter, it will become hard again.