Keystone Wood Finishing Facts | Wood Cabinet Finishes

Keystone offers the option of professional finishing services with your cabinet doors, drawer fronts, and other wood components orders. Choose from our more than 50 paints, stains, and glaze options or a custom color match to your specifications. View our Keystone Wood Specialties Finishing Facts below to decide on the best option for your next job.

Learn How to Care for Finished Products

POLISH SANDING

After sanding with 180 grit on a wide belt sander, cabinet doors, drawer fronts, and face frames are sanded with a palm random orbit sander with 150 grit sandpaper to remove belt and cross-grain scratches. We recommend that you prep your cabinet doors, drawers, and frames for finishing to ensure a uniform appearance with your cabinets.

WIPING STAINS

Our wiping stains are sprayed on and hand-wiped to achieve a smooth and thorough coverage. All stains are then top coated with two coats of catalyzed varnish.

SPRAY STAINS

Some wood species, such as maple, tend to become blotchy when finished with light-colored wiping stains. Spray stains offer an alternative stain that prevents the wood grain from “pulling”. Due to the nature of spray stains, some framing bead or panel raise profiles may result in a “halo” effect where the stain is slightly lighter in color at the edge of the profile.

PAINTS

Our paint grade products are coated with high-quality industrial-grade primers and paints that exhibit excellent moisture-resistant and non-yellowing properties. Another Keystone Wood Specialties finishing fact is that paints are sprayed on for a uniform finish.

GLAZES

Glazes can be applied to any paint, stain, or natural finish to give depth and definition to the product.

FINISHING FACTS

The color samples on this website are close representations only. We recommend that you request sample blocks for the colors you are interested in. Keep in mind that even real wood sample blocks can vary slightly from one batch to the next due to the natural variation in wood grain.

SHEEN

Unless otherwise specified, all finishes are 40 sheen (medium gloss). Other common options are 5 sheen (low gloss) and 60 sheen (high gloss). Our paint is 20-30 sheen. Contact customer service for more details.

PRIMING FOR PAINT

Products are available prepped and primed, ready for you to add your own paint finish. Finishing prep includes puttying gaps and imperfections, whitewood sanding, and prime painting with a high-grade primer. For orders painted by Keystone, your items will automatically be primed following this same process.

TOUCH-UP KITS

A touch-up kit consisting of a felt-tip stain marker and a fill stick is available to match our standard stain colors. We also offer touch-up kits for our standard paints. We recommend the purchase of a kit for each job to leave with your customer for future use.

ACCURACY OF COLOR SAMPLES

Keystone tries to be as accurate as possible when representing the colors of our finishes. However, due to the limits of various forms of color sampling, local lighting conditions, and the nature of wood itself, it is impossible to guarantee an absolutely exact representation of how your order will look.

Printed samples (such as our catalog) can be fairly close, but they can never completely compensate for the depth of wood grain and actual wood color. Viewing color online is the least accurate due to the virtually endless variables with monitors, handheld devices, etc.

Actual wood block samples are the most accurate. However, even here, due to the normal characteristics of real wood, the same stain finish applied on two samples of the same wood species can differ slightly. This accounts for the warmth, beauty, and value of natural wood.

Please contact us for more information about our Keystone Wood Specialties’ finishing facts. Our customer services team is ready to assist with any questions you may have.