Wood Finish (Oil vs. Film Finishes)

Wood finishes split into two fundamentally different strategies. Penetrating (oil) finishes -- boiled linseed oil, tung oil, and the many "oil finish" blends built around them -- soak into the wood's surface fibers and cure there, enhancing color and grain without building any real thickness on top; they're wiped or brushed on, wiped off, and offer real but modest protection, with an easy, low-drama repair process (just apply more). Film finishes -- polyurethane, lacquer, shellac, varnish -- instead cure into a continuous protective layer sitting on top of the wood, offering much stronger resistance to water, heat, and abrasion, at the cost of a more visible, plastic-like surface if applied heavily and a harder repair process when the film itself gets damaged.

Neither is universally "better" -- an oil finish suits furniture meant to look and feel like bare wood and gets touched up in minutes; a film finish suits a surface that needs to actually shrug off spills and scratches, like a tabletop or floor.