You are all over the board in your questions about the relative hardness of the finishes we can put on a pen.
Hardness relates to durability. It is also true that the hardness relates to taking longer and/or being more difficult to apply.
Gloss has nothing to do with hardness because all finishes can have the same high gloss immediately after they are applied, the difference is in how long the gloss will last. Some finishes, like wax, will deteriorate from nothing more than exposure to the atmosphere.
On a scale of 0 to 10, the hardness of the finishes looks like the following list, with a "Zero" beinr bare wood and a 10 reserved for the hardest finish that hasn't been discovered yet.
0 - Bare wood
1 - Burnished wood
2 - Wax
3 - Shellac
4 - Lacquer (Deft, etc.)
5 - Oil finishes with varnish resins (Waterlox, etc)
7 - CA Glue
8 - Waterborne polyurethane (Enduro, Enaxol)
9 - Acrylics (solid plastics, Stabilized wood, etc.) 10 - Not discovered yet
Some clarifications are necessary.
No. 1, Burnished wood, is compaction of the wood surface through heat and pressure, like what you would get if you rubbed a stick of wood against the spinning pen blank. It is also true that some of the exotic hardwoods can have a harder natural surface than either a shellac or lacquer.
No. 2, Wax is wax, regardless of what kind it is. There is a lot of difference in the hardness of the various waxes, but none of them will ever be as hard as the softest finish, shellac. Wax is used as a sacrificial protective coating over other finishes, and to polish them so they look good and are easier to dust. That's why we use it on furniture and replace it often.
Renaissance smells like kerosene because it is a petroleum product and Carnauba has a pleasant aroma because it came from a coconut palm tree. Blended wax products usually smell good because essenses are added to them.
No. 9, Acrylic is a generic term for solid plastic pen blanks, or plastics that are disolved in Acetone and other strong thinners and used to coat or impregnate the wood. These are not to be confused with the "Polycrylic" waterborne finishing products. These products are no harder than the shellac and lacquer they were developed to replace. The only difference is in their thinners.
Now you know why the higher numbered finishes on the list are preferred by most people who make and use pens.
