When you take a look around glaze seems to be more popular than ever on cabinets and furniture. There are more glaze colors and more different glaze applications today than ever before. Traditional methods of applying glazes by wiping, dry brushing and accenting are still very popular, but the one we seem to be hearing the most about is inking!
What is “Inking" ? Glaze “inking" is a very clean glaze look applied to the deep recesses and profiles of trim and moldings. Inking is different than traditional wipe on glazing because it leaves absolutely no trace of the glaze on the top surface. I've even seen it on painted white cabinets, with very dark glaze lines, and no residual glaze color left on the surface! It provides a sharp, clean contrast and is a very popular look on many cabinets and furniture. A recent trip to the local home improvement store's kitchen cabinet center proves that it is especially popular on kitchen cabinets. The cabinet doors on display literally showed 100's of examples of glaze “inking" in a myriad of color combinations.
How is “inking" accomplished? Glaze “inking" can be difficult and time consuming to achieve, especially on light wood/ dark glaze combinations. All glaze steps need to be performed after staining or painting your project and applying the first seal coat.
Glaze “inking" by Hand Applying glaze for an “inking" effect by hand is not an efficient or practical application in most cases. I've actually seen several very large cabinet factories with ten or more finishing employees standing around a table applying glaze with brushes and desperately wiping the surrounding surfaces clean. Not only is this method labor and rag intensive it's extremely inefficient and expensive. In addition it's extremely difficult to accomplish a clean appearance, especially on a light colored painted surface. You'll end up dampening your clean-up rags in solvent (more costs) to try and help pick-up the glaze. Of course on white or light colored cabinets this will create smears that are very hard to totally remove. Bottom line - it's just almost impossible to totally remove glaze on the surface without leaving a surface residue.
Glaze “inking" by Gun The most efficient way to apply glaze in the “ink" style is with a gravity fed inking gun. These guns are modifications of air brush guns used to apply pin striping and can place glaze in the grooves, cleanly and without wiping or other clean-up. I can tell you from first hand experience that successfully using a inking gun takes practice. You have to become adept at triggering the gun to end your line and moving the point of the gun to the next line with out glaze dribble. But with practice it becomes easier and you can run a complete “inking" job in no time.
My customer is asking for glaze “inking" ; now what? Take the time to do doors and other sample projects before you take on the pressure of performing this process on a customer's job. Use these same sample doors and projects as props to sell your work and demonstrate to your clients what you can do and most importantly what they can expect from a glaze “inking"look.
Practice will make your operation comfortable with the glaze “inking" process, the results will differentiate your work from the competition and provide clients with a popular option today's marketplace.
Written by Terry Parrish Copyright 2008. May not be reproduced in any form without specific written permission.
This article was published on Wednesday 05 March, 2008.
