here's a piece of black walnut that was destined to the burn pile...I'm standing back 6 or so feet taking the pic...that's me in the upper middle...blue sweats/tan shirt.

I used to use polyurethane but it seemed like all you would see is the plastic coating that you had to look through to see the wood. I changed to something called Tru-oil...something people have been using since forever on rifle stocks. With the tru-oil you see the wood and not the finish...it just shines.

This one has about 15 coats of finish...course a good slug of it got wet sanded off in the process.

I go to the auto paint store to buy the buffing and polishing compound.