General Finishes Satin Oil-Based Gel Topcoat, 1/2 Pint

froggy k.: Easy to use.Easy to apply. Great finish.

United States on Sep 28, 2023

Stephanie BunkerStephanie Bunker: Love the General Finishes line! I used to use polyshade (combined stain with poly) because it was quicker than doing separately. But on occasion, I’ve had to sand down work afterward because the finish wouldn’t look right. But when I first used the General Finishes Gel Stain in 2018, I was in awe of how easy it was to use and the professional looking result so I ordered the gel top coat. I was genuinely amazed at the results! So much easier to apply and the results looked professional, as though I bought it that way! Four years later, it still looks as good as day one! Now I only use General Finishes on all my woodworking projects! Totally worth the price!

United States on Jun 02, 2022

jjjj: Great finish so eat to use. Recommend steal wool between coats a use 3 counts for sure. At least 24 hours between coats.
But from local outlet as the Amazon contact charges 10 plus to deliver for every can even in the same box delivery. Way pricy so look around.

Canada on Apr 18, 2022

Sue Gardiner: The product is excellent ! No drips, even coats with both a brush or hand wipe on with lint free cotton fabric. Takes a little longer to dry in colder temps but over all I will use this product again and again!

Canada on Oct 17, 2019

BobPTBobPT: I used General Finishes Gray Gel Stain to stain our dark mahogany colored wet bar. After 3 coats, the finish was a bit glossier than what I had wanted. I thought the the General Finishes Gel TopCoat Satin would take some of the sheen away, but it only enhanced it. The cabinet now has a high gloss sheen instead of a satin finish. This is after 2 coats. The good news is that this product went on very easily using a sock wipe-on technique so I am giving it 3 stars for that. Just wipe it on like you were applying a polish. Then go over it one last time in the direction of the wood grain and it will self level into a nice, smooth finish. Do one area at a time as I found that it got tacky fairly quickly. Make sure you wipe any runs and drips from the edges and corners of the openings as you go along. If it had dried to a satin sheen, then I would have given it 5 stars. Slow drying. Took about 48 hrs. for it to be dry to the touch and be handled without smudging, instead of the 24 hours per the label (in near perfect temp and humidity conditions per the label) before I was able to apply the second coat.

This is more sheen than what I was intending for the cabinet. I had never used...

United States on Sep 18, 2019

kataline: way too expensive for a little tin and hard to clean should of bought the high gloss and did more searching found way bigger one for less , really ripped me off for my money

Canada on Apr 26, 2019

Mary: Instead of tearing out the existing cabinets or paying a professional to refinish them (both expensive options), I decided it was worth a few cans of paint to see if I could do it myself. My kitchen cabinets now look brand new and I've invested very little money into the project!!!

The consistency is like semi-melted butter and goes on so well with a name brand black-end foam brush (I used the cheap foam brushes for a lot of it, but switched to a fancy one half-way through and wished I used it the whole time). Because of the thickness, there are no drips or runs and you have so much control. Also, a little goes a LONG way!!

This ONE quart did two coats on all of my kitchen cabinets (and I have a lot of kitchen cabinets)! I didn't do inside the cabinet, but I did do the backs of cabinet doors.

My approach (there are a lot of different tutorials out there about this, but this was my way):
-I took down all the doors and took off the drawers and took hardware off.
-Lightly Sanded all the surfaces with a 150 grit.
-Vacuumed and wiped down all of the dust and debris. Made sure the surfaces were very clean.
-One coat of gel stain with a black-ended foam...

United States on Sep 19, 2016

brikster48: Just used this for the first time on an antique hoosier cabinet I was restoring. My shop is very dusty and small, so hard to keep dust out of my finish work usually. I wanted to try the GF wipe-on because I heard it dries quickly and helps eliminate some of the issue of getting dust in the finish. I did not use the GF gel stain underneath as I have a lot of other stains already and wanted to use a color I already had. I asked a question here about how the GF Gel Topcoat would work over other brands of stain but the answers weren't really definitive, but I took a chance that it would work okay over OIL-BASED stains by diff. manufacturers. I did some tests first– let the stain dry for 24 hours (Minwax and Varathane) and the GF Gel Topcoat worked fine. I went on the GF website and watched their how-to videos, and also went on YouTube and watched some videos by other folks who used this. It didn't look too difficult, and it wasn't. Compared to a typical brush-on poly, this goes on in much thinner coats, so you need to plan on more coats to give your wood the same level of protection. I ended up doing 4 coats, sanding VERY lightly between with some synthetic steel wool (after first 2...

United States on Aug 16, 2016