Green Woodworking: The Perfect Finish with RMP Finishes
Green woodworking is the practice of harvesting freshly felled wood (green) and transforming it, typically using only hand tools, into items such as spoons, bowls, chairs, and other objects. While some people look into kiln drying to remove the moisture content of wood and prevent wood shrinking and decay, doing so actually removes the “green” aspect that defines this craft! True green woodworking embraces the wood’s natural moisture, making shaping the wood much easier.
Part of the appeal of building your own projects is knowing you put them together with your own two hands, and using green woodworking techniques makes you feel good about their sustainability. This good feeling shouldn’t stop with the finishes one uses on these items. That’s where RMP Finishes can help!
Made with natural ingredients, RMP Finishes offers safe, eco-friendly coverage, whether you’re carving a spoon, creating a wooden tool, turning a wooden bowl, or completing a handmade project with care. This non-toxic powder paint mixes with water for an eco-friendly formulation that’s simple to dispose of when you finish, and finishing oils and waxes by RMP Finishes offer a food-safe way to seal your handmade goods once the paint dries.
No matter the project at hand, products from RMP Finishes provide a finish for green woodworking projects of novices and experts alike. Read on to learn more about green woodworking tips for using Real Milk Paint.
Eco-Friendly Paints With Natural Ingredients for Green Woodworking
Fluted Vase, painted in Soft White, by Wood Craft by Jonas Als
Real Milk Paint helps you strike a beautiful balance between form, function, and eco-friendliness. Perfect for use both indoors and out, Real Milk Paint mixes with water for simple preparation and allows only the exact amount needed for the project to be made. Also, by controlling the amount of water used, it’s easy to create different effects on your handcrafted green wood pieces.
An ingredient list comprising the milk protein casein, natural pigments, and calcium lime keeps our formulation simple and safe for both kids and pets. Made with no volatile organic compounds (VOCs), Real Milk Paint doesn’t have a strong odor, so you can apply it indoors for hassle-free use year-round. Additionally, this non-toxic paint contains no radioactive kaolin clay as a filler, using instead edible plant materials to enhance its environmental friendliness.
Carved Spoon, sealed with Dark Tung Oil, by @crowdogsloyd
Sustainable Finishing Products for Green Wood
Keeping your green woodwork natural from start to finish is easy. The term green woodworking refers to building with freshly cut, unseasoned wood that still holds natural moisture, making it softer and easier to shape. You can easily protect these creations by using sustainable finishing products from RMP Finishes to seal and protect your projects. Eco-friendly formulations containing no or low VOCs make our pastes and waxes a pleasure to use, while all-natural oils such as tung and hemp elevate the look of your woodworking projects without permeating your home with chemical scents.
Working with green wood is also more sustainable when you choose locally sourced hardwoods, since unseasoned wood can be cost-effective and reduce the impact of transportation.
We also carry a natural citrus solvent that lets you thin down both paints and finishing products as needed for a safe alternative to CFC-laden products. Additionally, this plant-based formulation pulls double duty as a concentrated cleaner, providing an easy way to clean dirty surfaces of your green wood.
Powdered Formulation for Working Green Wood and Customized Mixing
Since Real Milk Paint arrives as a powder and requires mixing with water before use, you can use as little or as much as you want for every project with little to no waste. You can always mix up more if necessary and speed through some of the settling process by adding a few drops of our non-toxic Anti-Foaming Agent to the mixture if you’re in a hurry.
Additionally, Real Milk Paint contains stabilizers that keep it fresh and ready to use for your green wood (after some shaking) for up to two weeks, letting you pause your project and come back to it later without mixing new paint. Lastly, Real Milk Paint makes it simple to combine colors to create customized mixtures perfectly suited to your project, reducing the need to run to the store for new colors when inspiration strikes.
Food-Safe Finishes for Carved Unseasoned Wood Projects
Spalted Maple bowl, sealed with Half & Half by @southernterminusga
Finishing products from RMP Finishes, such as Tung Oil, Half & Half, and Hemp Oil, have a food-safe formulation, making them an excellent way to finish butcher blocks, wooden kitchen straight knives, and wooden spoons and forks. Ideal for green woodworking, these finishing oils also work well for finishing wooden spoons and other carved items, with cherry, birch, and sycamore being good species for small carved pieces.
Different woods suit different projects:
- Ash is a strong choice for furniture.
- Oak and sweet chestnut suit more durable outdoor work.
Use these all-natural products to complete the look of hand-carved platters and bowls, or put them to work coating tenon joints and countertops made from butcher block material. Green woodworking is also favored for functional objects and handmade furniture in traditional styles, including Windsor chairs and timber-framed buildings. This environmentally friendly feature also makes many products from RMP Finishes well-suited to making jewelry design elements, including carved beads made by special power tools.
Fuss-Free Disposal After Project Completion
Because most products from RMP Finishes have natural ingredients and low to no VOCs, after-project disposal is completely fuss-free.
Whether it’s traditional woodworking or green woodworking, Real Milk Paint contains no harmful materials and dissolves completely in water, so you can dump leftovers down the sink and rinse out your container with confidence. The same goes for finishing oils — simply wipe them up with paper towels and toss them in the trash with no worries about your carbon footprint.
Turned wooden bowls, painted with Navy Blue and Flag Red Real Milk Paint and sealed with Half & Half, by @ew_foss
Why Green Woodworkers Love Real Milk Paint
In addition to its sustainable formulation, Real Milk Paint also helps keep your environment clean after application. Having no VOCs in its formulation may improve air quality in your space, further aided by milk paint’s ability to absorb ambient carbon dioxide as it hardens. Another benefit is that it also inhibits mold and mildew growth, helping reduce allergens in households with sensitive members.
In green woodworking, the wood is often more wet and has a higher moisture content, which makes it easier to shape with hand tools. That accessibility often appeals to beginners because the basic supplies are simple, affordable, and take up less space than machinery or other power tools.
Lastly, Real Milk Paint withstands frequent use on furnishings with ease, holding up beautifully over the years with its naturally distressed look. This durability means that once you finish your project, it maintains its beauty over time. Furthermore, joints such as mortise and tenon can even tighten as the wet wood dries around drier parts, so you don’t have to refinish it until you’re ready for a change of decorative pace.
Essential Tools and Techniques
A basic beginner kit includes an axe, a straight knife, and a hook knife. Once you have your tools, a key foundational practice is splitting a log along the grain. More advanced green woodworkers may also use a shave horse and a pole lathe to shape parts, using techniques that follow the grain for strong, flowing surfaces.
For green woodworkers seeking green woodworking options to complete the look of their handmade goods, such as a hook knife, products from RMP Finishes make sense due to their sustainability, eco-friendliness, and ease of access for many woodworkers. Natural ingredients, non-toxic formulations, and hassle-free disposal options make Real Milk Paint, our finishing oils, and our waxes suitable for environmentally friendly projects, ranging from finishing wooden spoons to adding vibrant flair to Windsor chairs.