One more woodchuck thread, Help please

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Jan 26, 2002
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Wooden handle oil finish

I know this has been discussed endlessly, and I'm sorry for bringing it up yet again, but things don't all seem to be in one place and I wanted to see if I really get the whole picture before continuing further. My current understanding for uncarved wooden handles is:

*Phase 1: Sand down wood to smooth handle and remove rouge. Gently clean grooves with toothpick, folded sandpaper or jewelers file. Apply thin coat of tung oil [be careful you don't buy pure tung oil like I almost did...it won't dry unless you add drying agents yourself. I thank the guy at the checkout for asking if I really wanted pure oil!!]. This softens remaining rouge and more can be removed using steel wool with the grain while the oil is wet. [I found the steel wool particles getting in the pores so I brushed lightly with a fine wire brush with the grain to remove them. Wipe off with a cloth or brown paper bag, and repeat until all particles are gone.] Let remaining thin layer of oil dry overnight. Repeat sanding with paper, apply oil, use steel wool, brush out grain, wipe off oil, let dry. Maybe 3-4 times, or until lots of rouge stops coming out. Here you are trying to open the grain to get the loose rouge out. Initially, gentle use of 320 paper worked best for me, finer plugs up too fast. After lots of rouge stops coming up, go to 400 or 600 paper.

*Phase 2: Now you want to begin to fill the pores and grain in the wood. Sand across the grain with 400 or 600 grit and apply a thin coat of oil, and wipe with paper while wet to pick up more rouge and excess oil. Leaving too much oil will only clog the sandpaper later. Allow oil to fully dry, repeat until???

This is where I am now.

Do I continue Phase 2 until the pores and grain are filled? Is a fine sawdust-oil composite filling the grain, or do I want to remove all the sawdust from pores (tackcloth?) and let pure oil fill? Applying the oil with paper towels seems to remove sawdust, brown paper or finger doesn't. Any estimate of how many cycles this wil take? I am kinda afraid to use steel wool again until the grain fills; I'm afraid tiny pieces will get in the grain, and brushing them out will reverse the filling process.

I've not used any Armor-all yet, I presume that its not really useful until Phase 2 and might hinder getting the rouge out? Is the Armor-all an option for a harder, shinier finish, or essential to close up the grain?

What I think Phase 3 is:

*Phase 3: The goal here is to lay down a hard, many layered finish over a handle essentially free of rouge, with filled pores. Sand with the grain, using worn 400 grit or 600 paper, finishing with 0000 steel wool. Wipe off any sawdust and apply a very thin coat of oil. While oil is wet apply the tinest bit of Armor-all to the finger, and with a polishing motion rub into the entire handle. Let thoroughly dry. After a couple coats only the steel wool is used. Repeat until:
1) You can't stand it anymore.
2) A uniform, glassy finish is achieved.
3) You are insane.
In instance 1 or 2, finish with a final coat of oil/Armor-all, let dry, and do not sand the last coat to retain gloss. A few coats ofpaste wax will add to the durablity of the finish. In the case of instance 3 try to give the tung oil and wax to a friend or loved-one for safe-keeping. They are bad to sniff, eat or drink; you will very much regret their ingestion if you do regain your sanity.

Comments, corrections and advice from Journeyman Woodchucks or the Master Frog himself are very much appreciated.

A beginning Woodchuck Apprentice ( Just-Hatched Tadpole, level 0)
 
According to the label on my little bottle of 100% pure tung oil. It says that the pure stuff doesn't penetrate as deeply if you don't mix it with mineral spirits. Also it dries slower. The finish I get is not shiny. Also the bottle says that pure tung oil is non toxic. Meaning if I get thirsty while woodchucking I can take a swig. :p
 
BL:

The guy at Rockler's said the pure stuff will never dry. He said people who buy it formulate their own mixtures by mixing it with penetrating and drying agents. Maybe what looks like drying is just soaking into the wood? Maybe the Armor-all (don't know if your'e using it) would act a drying agent? Any way, I suspect the pure stuff may not ever build up to protective coating on top of the wood so no gloss is possible. But you could always lightly sand, and change over to a formulated oil later if you want. You may need to brush grime out of the pores and open grain too. If you wax after using pure tung oil, you might need to brush wax out the open grain before re-finishing.

I'm hoping to get the pores and open grain completely filled so grime can just be wiped off and can't work into the wood. I just don't know if the formulated stuff sets up hard enough to bind in fine sawdust like wood sealers or whether I should get rid of all the sawdust. If the latter, it will take more coats to fill. I also don't know if it would look worse if I let the sawdust help fill.

EDIT:

Strangely enough I seem to recall that the pure stuff came as high gloss, or both high gloss and low gloss, which is why I initially grabbed the pure, high gloss variety. After the guy told me it would never dry, I got the formulated kind, which they only had available as low gloss. Go figure :confused:
 
Otay, here we go...1. The final shine, gloss whatever is just like bluing a gun. The shinier the metal surface, the shinier the final finish (excepting the smoothness of the coating itself). Wood varies widely in the number of sandings needed to polish and fill the surface. The "step downs" in grit and grade of abrasives are not always necessary. Make it a judgement call. Some woods will polish up at the end of Step 1. The burl on my big UBE did this (and then wouldn't take oil, but that's in chapter eleventeen, "Idiot Woods"). Saatisal usually needs very little fill sanding. On most of mine, I've just kept going until I have an oil fill.

Armor All is intended as a binder. It is a polymer solution/concoction, and blends (I am told) coats together. I cannot say that it hastens drying, but it will dull the coat to which it is applied, until that coat is rubbed out. If applied unevenly, it may spot, but this will rub out as well.

I use Formby's high gloss tung oil, or Birchwood Casey Tru Oil. Both are formulations, containing penetrants and driers (evaporative carriers/thinners) and speed the drying time considerably. Both are tung oil based.

So much of this tedium is subject to your own observation, the particular piece of wood you are working, your patience, humidity and even plain dumb luck at times, that there are no hard fast procedures. I've put down the whole enchilada, which you might encounter on a particularly difficult chunk of wood. I was taught to take the finish down to the wood every time, in step one. Even so, I experiment all through the process, doubling up here, eliminating there, and making my own judgement calls as the appearance of the grain emerges. My version of step three is to keep the coats very light and thin, and the use of the wool/paper/cloth very lightly, after the last coat is hard to the touch. When you can hold the Khuk in front of you (Saatisal handle), and see a very dark stripe, then rotate the blade to "point up" position and watch that stripe DISAPPEAR, you know you are nearly there (HEE) and you will truly be hooked. When the stripes that do not disappear begin to have gold flakes in them, that come and go as the handle moves, it only gets worse. Enjoy.
 
Walosi, Thanks, but I think I'm dense...

RE: Step 2:
Saatisal usually needs very little fill sanding. On most of mine, I've just kept going until I have an oil fill.

But I don't have to worry about a long rut of open grain fill-sanded with a mixture of fine sawdust and formulated oil (several sandings) falling out later? Theres a lot of pretty deep open grain in my wood. Maybe 1/64" deep in some places... should I sand down this far???Seems that I'll just open more of the same.

EDIT: Most of this grain is pretty dark, mostly black. Is this just dirt or natural color in the wood? Should I try sand down until until dark grainy streaks and spots are removed?

-I realize that your'e not using the Rockler brand formulated tung oil I've got, but they're probably not all that different.(?)

I use Formby's high gloss tung oil, or Birchwood Casey Tru Oil. Both are formulations, containing penetrants and driers (evaporative carriers/thinners) and speed the drying time considerably. Both are tung oil based.

This is one or two days to dry vs what week(s)?

Looking at this wood right after the oil is applied, I wish they'd stocked the high gloss stuff....or I'd gone to the trouble to go find the high gloss elsewhere.

The final shine, gloss whatever is just like bluing a gun. The shinier the metal surface, the shinier the final finish (excepting the smoothness of the coating itself).

So I can lightly sand down to a smooth surface later, not necessarily down to bare wood and replace the outer coats with the high gloss stuff to convert to a high gloss finish?
Ever encountered any problem with mixing brands?
 
I can't say positively that a filled stretch of grain won't fall out - just that it is not probable, after the fill is bonded in, and under several additional coats. I haven't encountered open rain quite that deep, but have had several dark bands that had open grain almost their entire length. I cross-sanded these (still tacky with oil) to about half their depth, and let the fill dry, then continued on. What didn't stay in the pores from cross-sanding became oil-filled later on.

I couldn't give you a real-time comparison, but boiled linseed oil usually takes about twice the drying time of the prepared Tru Oil or Formby's. That is the only base on which I've tried to make my own concoctions, and while they worked, the commercials worked better and faster.

I've used Formby's low gloss, and changed to high gloss in mid-stream only once, on a hickory heart cane. I used steel wool only, to take the low gloss coats down, and went on as usual applying the high coats. The "gimmmick" with an oil finish, is that the first two-three coats penetrate the surface of the wood, and make it translucent. Subsequent coats cover and harden to protect this translucency, and also act to refract the light into and out of the grain - hence the "light show" effects. You might do a "changeover" finish on one handle, and a "high gloss only" on the next, and if the "high only" handle is a bit brighter, I don't believe there is a person alive who could authoritatively say it was the difference in finish, and not the difference in the wood's ability to accept the oils. A full low gloss vs. a full high gloss will show a difference in translucence due to the lower light admission of the low gloss oil, but it still accents the grain well. I just don't know if a low gloss finish will show the same dramatic "movement" of grain that a high gloss finish is capable of. Saatisal is the best wood I've ever seen for this result under oil, and I wouldn't experiment with it now that I've grown used to the high gloss results. If my photography skills ever go beyond the "Crayola Closeup" stage, I'll send Al some pics that I hope will show a "disappearing band" on a GS handle. This isn't the only feature on this handle, but it is the only one I think will show in pics. Ya nicogda nichevo ne zhneyou.
Mixing brands, if a problem at all, should be solved by an additional sand-down or two. I don't believe there is a great enough difference, tho' to cause even that.
 
I'm sure glad that I've got those dust bunnies to take care of the handles -- and everything else for that matter.
 
Thanks again, Wal.

I know I'm getting to be (am?) a dense pest.

It now looks like the super-dark grain has dirt in it and will sand down. I'm a couple of days ahead on the karda and chakma handles to scope things out ahead of the khuk handle. Not much wood there; I didn't want to do the woodchuck equivalent of sharpening the flat instead of the bevel and wind up with toothpicks. I now think I'm still in stage 1.

The reason I'm annoyingly particular on the details is that that, when wet with just-applied oil, the abundant gold sapwood in the karda is translucent and shimmering like highly-polished tiger-eye stone. If the final finish can look like that it will be hypnotic.

I very much appreciate your patience and time taken to respond.

And Bill, I don't have dust bunnies here, the entropy dragons devoured all of them long ago.
 
firkin, you are neither dense nor a pest. I live by the belief that there are no absolutes in life. Putzing around with wood, and showing up its' beauties, is one of the better aspects of this belief, which can be disappointing in other areas. It can give a sense of accomplishment far more valuable than the cost of the supplies, when you turn a dowdy block of woodpecker fruit into a thing of beauty. When it is beautiful wood, on a beautiful knife, it is magnified even more. I enjoy passing it along. One more thing to try - when you have your final finish, and it is totally dry, rub it down one more time with your bare fingertips or the ball of your thumb. Very fast, light strokes to build friction heat, but not enough to cause your skin to "grab" the finish. It MAY (doesn't always work, and it isn't possible to perfect) cause the finish to set up a mirror sheen which will stay put under a couple of coats of wax. This is my "magic skin" (kamis gots magic stone, so why not?) finish. If the last coats are not dry all the way down, it can mess up a finish that would be a keeper, and blisters are normal, but I thought I'd throw it in FWIW. Bruiser, just another bit that crawled out of someplace in the old memory bank.
 
Firkin if you have WalMarts around where you live they will have the Formby's Tung Oil and it isn't all that expensive.
Birchwood Casey Products can be found at most any decent sporting goods store and isn't at all expensive either.
I would check around before I put too much time on a low gloss finsh if it really isn't what you want.
Unless.......more later. ;-)

I have tried changeing from a low gloss to a high gloss in midstream and couldn't tell much difference if any to the finishes completed and done with all high gloss.

My 0.02 cents worth on high and low gloss finishes done on something you really want to stand out is to always use high gloss and shoot for the shinest finish you can obtain, otherwise why bother.
(One nice thing about a super glue finish.:) )
Low gloss works well on larger projects and on pieces that you prefer another part of to stand out or be equal too.
Say for instance that you had a beautiful old Colt Pistol that was rich with engraving and embellished with small precise details in gold and silver perfectly applied and that a high gloss finish on wood handles would make it garish and overdone.
An excellent place for a low gloss finish on a beautiful rich burly wood grain.

The low gloss would accentuate the old pistol nicely bringing the artistic touches all together rather than at odds with one another IMO.
In any case the preparation on any piece such as this are perhaps the most important step in finishing the low gloss finish.
It must be perfectly sanded to begin with and then between coats with increasingly finer and finer grades until it is super smooth and perfectly sealed such as a piece of matte glass would be.
When turned under light there should be Absolutely No Evidence of Grain in the surface.
And By the Gods Absolutely No Evidence of A Sanding Scratch!!!!
That goes to show you that putting the perfect low gloss finish on a beautiful burly rich piece of wood can be just as demanding or more so than a comparable high gloss finish.;)
 
Thanks Yvsa and Walosi for all your help.

I got the Rockler's low gloss formulated tung oil before I really knew what the potential of that karda handle was.

Right now I mainly want to get the handles sanded down with a good grain fill and outer layer to protect the wood from picking up and embedding dirt. They certainly look much better already, and there's still lots of open grain left with apparently some blackish dirt that got in before the rouge was applied. I just wanted to be sure that I could easily convert to the high gloss later if desired. Especially since I bought the smallest quantity available from Rockler's and that was a quart!

You both suggest that thats no problem and thanks for the benefit of your experience.

This is quite different from my experience in messing about with acrylic artist's paint, where the matte medium contains fine suspended particles and must be used very sparingly or things get very flat and even milky. I have found that the the very tedious technique of sanding the painting and using multiple coats of transparent color in gloss medium creates an interesting depth to the painting and can make use of the "grain" created by sanding down brush strokes or purposefully textured underpainting lettin what's below come through in spots. Or several coats of clear medium can protect whats below before sanding smooth and applying more transparent color. Maybe the onion-skin version of painting.

So I understand completely the need for a ultra-smooth finish. After a few layers of scratches, the thing just looks foggy. Sanding pure transparent acrylic paint or medium is a real bitch...most things I've read say you can't do it. Fortunately I tried it before reading that you can't do it!! It softens at very low temperature, but very slow sanding with fine wet-dry paper and water does work. Here, friction heat kills. It's so soft that final polish can be brought up by buffing with with a paper towel!

It's kinda the reverse of what I want to do with the handles. With the painting, you use the gloss medium to build depth and finally tone the gloss down slightly with a semi-matte varnish that dries harder to protect the soft acrylic and allow viewing from angles other straight on with little reflection. Fortunately the varnish dries without leaving brush-strokes unlike the acrylic medium.

Maybe that's why I was quite uncertain about converting from low-gloss oil finish to high-gloss.

But at least with the wood, you can sand everything down, and start over, providing you don't run out of wood!!

BL, I don't think he's holding out. He's just done it so much he now runs on pure instinct and reflex. It's hard to translate what has become automatic to step-by step individual instructions.
 
Originally posted by firkin
Thanks Yvsa and Walosi for all your help.

You're quite welcome.
Always a pleasure to pass experience on to the upcoming generation.:)
Besides it's an ndn thing.;)
No, Really.:)

They certainly look much better already, and there's still lots of open grain left with apparently some blackish dirt that got in before the rouge was applied.

Firkin I strongly suspect that any "blackish dirt" embedded in the wood grain is actually the dust/dirt from working the steel and resulting carbon and with the close proximity of charcoal.
Devilish stuff to get out!!!!:(

Especially since I bought the smallest quantity available from Rockler's and that was a quart!

A QUART!!!! A Full Quart!!!! Quick run out and buy a piece of unfinished furniture to use it on!!!!;)
Just tzn, but a quart will maybe last you several years unless it goes bad.
I know boiled linseed oil can go bad, but I don't know about tung
oil.
I would imagine that the driers and such would go bad before to terribly long though.
Walosi can probably clue us in on that info.:)

It softens at very low temperature, but very slow sanding with fine wet-dry paper and water does work. Here, friction heat kills. It's so soft that final polish can be brought up by buffing with with a paper towel!

Hmmm.
Firkin something to file away for future reference.
"Paper Towels are BAD!!!!"

Here's why.
Paper Towels are often/always made with wood fibers. Wood Fibers can and do Scratch!!!!
The scratches may not show up readily on the medium you're using them on, but you may not be getting all you could be.
If it is satisfactory to you then by all means pay me no mind, but keep the reference for future use when you want an entirely scratch free finish.

I learned that bit of info from our Optical Store when I purchased my 1st pair of spectacles from them.
( Yes, Spectacles. When they reach Trifocal stage as mine have then you can call your eyeglasses Spectacles.;) )
Other optical stores never revealed that bit of info because it generates more business for them. When lens get scratched they have to be polished or replaced.
And paper towels can and do scratch spectacles even the ones made from glass!!!!!!!:(
When I asked what they did use for cleaning lenses I was told the cheapest tissue they can get.
Seems that paper products made for the nose doesn't have wood fibers.:D
 
"Magic Skin" hmmm, sounds good. I've been working on the kardas and chakmas from my recently arrived brace of khuks, and I'm just about brave enough to try working on the AK handle. The grain on the kardas and chakmas is indeed amazing, even on just the first few coats, quite an improvement over the original "pretty much plain red wood" with all that rouge.

I did alter the first cleaning a little, as I couldn't get my hands on any Murphys Oil Soap. I made up a thick solution of OxyClean and scrubbed with a toothbrush, which seemed to work pretty well. Later, when annoyed by an overthick layer of Formby's that refused to dry, I took it off with GooGone cleaner, then applied it to other handles and it worked well too. I was a little worried about it dissolving the original epoxy (laha?), but no problems so far.

I keep hearing about a superglue finish, but I haven't seen any tips on applying it. Is it for more of a working finish, how much will it affect the magic skin finish? On my workbench has sprung an amazing assortment of Walosification supplies here in the past 2 weeks, soon to be followed by sharpening tools (sure to be the subject of future posts), so some superglue will not be out of place. How is it spread, just thinly with your fingers?
 
Yvsa:

RE paper towels on my paintings, it works, either the scratches aren't big enough to matter and concealed by later coats, or this is the equivalent of Wal's skin polish since it does have to get a little warm to work. I supect the latter since the acrylic markedly softens a little above room temperature, and that the smooth paper towel doesn't pick up and tear the layers. You can certainly mess things up if overdone and you push too hard.

But your'e absolutely correct about wood-pulp paper, as far as I know.

In general, paper made from wood is the worst for all applications....rough, short, scratchy fibers,acid processing, short fibers require lots of extra stuff added that shortens life, and if white, full of bleaches. This makes it self-destruct in a very short time as well as things in contact with it. Look at the pages of a few year-old paperback. If you want anything on paper to last, use artist's paper or rag paper. Don't know about now, but they made me print the library copy of my thesis on special 100% rag paper for this reason. Any product made from normal wood paper is avoided in archive-quality art framing too.

Always a pleasure to pass experience on to the upcoming generation.

I hope some of them read this thread!!

I'm not quite THAT young--I'm old enough to say that to a half-grown young'n if'n I had one; but you're never to old to learn what you should'a learnt when you were younger... :D
 
Thanks firkin! I must have missed it when that thread went to two pages, and my searches weren't turning up anything. Off to the store again!
 
Thanks Firkin.:)
Looks like you've covered all the bases.

Once more......
Be Sure and Provide Good Ventilation!!!! A couple of whiffs of heavy super glue fumes will convince you right about the time your eyes start burning!!!!!!

We can never practice too many saftey precautions. There's no telling what the affects of long term super glue inhalation may cause.:(
 
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