How to reproduce a finish as accurately as possible

Often the representatives of the factories I work with, but not only them, want me to help them "copy" a finish they have seen in a magazine, at a fair or at a competitor's company. Some of them need help for their customers. For example, the client already has a laminate floor with a certain finish installed and wants to reproduce it on the wooden steps of the interior staircase. Each time I tell them that the finish can be reproduced, that the materials and technology are not a problem, but there might be problems because of the wood backing on which the finish is done. And in this case they need to know that even if the finish has been reproduced identically, the final look may be very different from what they want. What I mean is that, when reproducing a finish, the nature of the wood, the colour, the way the wood is cut, the way it is prepared in white, have a very big influence on the result.

To help you understand what I mean, I'll give you a few examples. Let's say the finish to be reproduced is on oak and the wood available is spruce (or other softwoods).

Even if the colour is reproduced identically using a spectrophotometer, the effect will be totally different, especially in the case of the transparent finish. Oak is a darker wood, towards grey, it is hard and has pores. Spruce is more yellowish, without pores and is a softer wood.

The bath applied to the fir wood will be absorbed deeply and bring out the natural pattern of the wood, making the result very different from the oak sample. There will be no visible pores. Even if it is a uniforming stain like the one in the picture, it still fails to eliminate the differences. Even if the finish is pigmented it doesn't solve the problem. Indeed, the differences will decrease a little but the end result will be just as different.

If it is difficult to find wood of the same species, try copying on similar species. For example, by adjusting the colour, you can achieve the effect on the oak sample, on ash or ash, i.e. hard woods with large pores mixed into the late wood area.

I say adjusting the colour because you can see in the picture below how much the natural colour of the wood influences the end result. On 5 types of wood - oak, maple, cherry, mahogany and walnut - the same stain is applied. Although the berry is uniform, smoothing out the differences between the species, you can still identify each of them.

There are situations where the wood is hardwood, has a similar colour, has pores, but they are different. In this case it is also difficult to reproduce the finish, especially if the bath or patina marks it. This is the case with oak compared to beech. You will never be able to copy the effect achieved on oak,

on a beech wood.

Beech has small pores spread all over the surface, making a totally different pattern from oak.

Big differences can also occur using the same essence. If the cutting was done differently the wood will have a different natural design. Take the example of the oak tree. If the original finish is done on a tangentially cut wood (fladere),

it will not be able to be reproduced on one with radial cut (friz).

This is even harder if the pores are marked with patinas.

If the finish to be reproduced is done on a structured wood, so must the one to which it will be applied. When the wood is structured, the wood is absorbed and sits differently, the sanding between layers will bring out the design differently, and the patina, if used, will have a different effect compared to a normal, unstructured solid wood. With structured wood, the layers of berry and patina are seen in 3D, whereas with normal surfaces, everything happens in the plane, without the expected effect.

If the reproduction is done on veneered panel, there is no question of structuring, which is done on solid wood or thick veneer. On veneered panel, because of the very small thickness of the veneer (aesthetic veneer), it cannot be done. If however a brushing with a wire brush is attempted, all that will be obtained will be a deeper scratching of the veneer, but the finish on such a support will have no connection with the original one.

At the beginning I was telling you, as an example, about people who want their stairs to look like laminate flooring.

There is always a problem here because it is a design that has to look like a finish on wood. And if that drawing looks like an antiqued parquet floor, with patinas and all sorts of overlapping colours, then it's even harder. Because such a finish can only be achieved on structured wood and laminate flooring is straight, without the slightest bump. That's why it's good to tell the customer from the outset why it will be impossible for wooden steps to look perfectly like laminate flooring.

If you want to copy a finish, try first making a sample on a small piece of the wood you will use. That way everyone will know from the start what the end result will be. When I am asked to reproduce a finish, I always ask my collaborators for pieces of the wood they will use. If I use a wood that I happen to have, the risk that the result I get will be different from what will be obtained in the factory is very high.

If a finish is to be reproduced, it is best to use the same wood species as the substrate, with the same cutting and preparation as the finish. If this is not possible, you will get something similar and not an identical effect and the customer should know this from the start. Those of us who have been working with wood for a long time know these things and it seems to us that others do too. But this is not the case and it is good that people are warned from the beginning so that they are not disappointed in the end.