Ziel Coatings

Special thanks to Jeff Weiss, President of Ziel Coatings, for answering my questions and helping me select the best finishing recipe for my project. I am very happy with the results.

I remember finishing as an arduous and noxious process when I first started woodworking at age ten in my parent's garage and only had access to Minwax products available at Pergament Home Center. I never understood how the Minwax products were supposed to be applied and always had awful results that ruined my projects. Unwilling to use Minwax ever again, I researched finishing options before buying any lumber for the kids' desks.

Target Coatings has water-based shellac, lacquer and varnish that appeared ideal when I researched finishing options. It was the only coatings company with a customer forum. Any company willing to expose raw customer comments on a public forum is a company that is confident in the quality of its products.

I decided to use it for this project, but I still had questions about the spray tool, mixture, recipe and resulting color. I telephoned the company and the receptionist connected me to "Jeff" who answered my questions. Jeff was even familiar with the spray gun I was planning to use. Only after I returned to Target's customer forum did I realize that Jeff was the founder of the company.

After spraying a test panel with Target's shellac and varnish, I stood back and realized for the first time that this was going to be a beautiful desk. Target Coatings makes fabulous products that were a pleasure to use and far superior to anything I have ever used in the past.