You can also view my gallery at Designs en Bois.

Friday, June 18, 2010

All finished - well not exactly

Don't get too excited, but it's time for another finish experiment. Just after I selected figured cherry for the drawers and door panels, I saw an online demo of Charles Neil's new pre-color conditioner for blotch control.  I had been contemplating going for the "aged cherry" look for this piece, which usually means some kind of dye, stain, or glazing.  And I know what dye and figured cherry typically mean - blotching.  So I figured I'd run an experiment with the blotch control under a few different finish options and evaluate the results.  I won't spill the beans of the final selection just yet, but this episode shows the process and results of the experiment.

By the way, this is a process I like to go through before I start assembling any project.  There are usually certain components like floating panels that can be easier to finish before assembling.  So testing a number of finish options early on in the process can be very helpful.  There's nothing worse than laboring over a project and applying a finish only to find it wasn't what you were expecting.  Just another example of better safe than sorry (which seems to be a recurring theme in this craft).

3 comments:

Ryan said...

Hey Rob,

I'm thinking that the tiny grayish dots you were seeing in that sample may have been metal from your sand paper. I couldn't tell what kind of paper it was, but I've switched to using garnet paper or a wet/dry sand paper because any metal that might get embedded with rust if you use water based finishing products. I've also had a lot of luck with the scotch brite sanding pads for between coats. They last a lot longer than paper!

It's always a good idea to use a tack cloth to get most of the sanding dust back off of the surface and a soft paint brush to clean the crevices. Nothing worse than ruining in 5 minutes something that took tens of hours to build!

Rob Bois said...

I realized as I was editing the video, I never went back and retested the blotch control to find the source of the flecks. Because it was a test piece, I was not following the same level of precaution I would with a final finish. I'm ultimately going to be just using oil for the project, so it's not an issue for this piece, but I would like to at least get to the bottom of the mystery for future reference. All good advice, thanks Ryan.

Bruce Somers said...

Rob,

Excellent information and production quality. I appreciate your efforts to help us all learn.

Looking forward to seeing the final piece.

Bruce