How to finish Curly Maple??

Col Defender

Col Defender

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Nov 11, 2011
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OK I did a search but came up empty, hence a new thread.

I have an almost complete little knife here with Curly Maple scales. So far I have sanded it to 1000 grit and now am not sure what to do next. Is it normal to oil this wood? Just buff it? Wax?

Anyone who is used to doing this wood - please let me know before I mess up a nice handle! :confused:

Thanks

Steve
 
You could stain it....and clear coat it.
With stain, you have many options for color...that will make the grain "pop" out.

Or, just put tung oil on it...but, the grain wont be as bold looking. There are different stages of tung oil...matte, semi gloss, high gloss.
 
TruOil would work nicely. Unless you want to keep the light color, I would consider coloring it in some way. I use Fiebings spirit based letter dye.
 
I agree with JMForge.
Wood stain can look blotchy. Solvent base leather dye is the way to get the most even coloring.
DO NOT USE WATER BASE LEATHER DYE

You can get a cool double dye look by applying a dark color like black. Let it dry and then sand lightly.
That removes some of the dye. Then dye again with a light color like gold.
 
Steve - there is a lot of good info stashed away here. A quick search should lead to more than you want to know.

Try this thread for example:

http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php/1107746-What-kind-of-varnish-for-curly-maple

Not mentioned in that post IIRC, but I have had great results using potassium permanganate on Curly Maple. Common methods used by stock makers often work well on knife handles.

Whatever you decide, please don't use polyurethane on knife handles ... ever.
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- Being worth the proverbial thousand words, I've edited to add pic of this hunter in Curly Maple done with two rounds of potassium permanganate. Afterwards finished with a few very thin coats of BC Tru-Oil - wiped back with 800 grit Redline after 1st application and then canvas afterwards. My goal here was to fill the grain but not build a film finish. Some will advise boiled linseed oil as finish, but IME it greatly speeds the darkening of maple handled this way. Experiment and keep labeled test pieces to see what happens over the years.

uRga5Er.jpg
 
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I and others I know use chromic acid to color it. There are recipes out there but I use plain old chromic acid. I finish mine with Tru oil. You need some sort of finish that will dry hard. Sand and buff.
 
awesome thread... I am wondering if this will work on other woods just as well. Curly maple and burl are two of the most amazing looking classic knife handles.

P.S. read that thread on Andy's post
 
Man, a book could be written on this subject. Pa Long Rifles were often in fiddleback maple and there are many different looks. The Japanese use a form of burning called Suigi if I am spelling it right. Then a finish is applied. You can stain with very strong tea then put in an enclosed area with commercial strength ammonia (maybe 27%). Then finish. Some use a walnut stain, then finish. Some dye as part of the stabilizing process. Maple is one of the great knife handle and gun stock woods. Fiddle, feather, tortoise shell, spalted or combinations. I have grips out of about 40 kinds of wood, but I have more maple than anything else. All is treated, sanded, and buffed. Gunstocks are usually too long to treat so eack one is done to taste. The best I have ever done was tea & ammonia, then Tru-Oil.
 
I didn't use wood for a very long time and just happened to do a couple of scales at the time Mark Farley put up a thread with using oil and laquer. I used just Tung oil on some beautiful grained birch in the manner he described . It came up real nice. I think I must have used 20 coats or so with all my playing around. Yes wood still is beautiful isn't it?
Frank.
 
I believe magic maple is mostly chromic acid. It has other stuff in it but I'm not sure what. I don't know the price difference but a small bottle of chromic acid will go a long way.
 
If you have some scraps, play a little bit and see what works. Different species of Maple act VERY differently.
 
Use Aqua Fortis. It's an acid stain muzzleloader a use. It's beautiful! Then tru oil. It's the only way to go with maple that does the wood justice
 
I learned the Fiebings trick from Bill Moran's video. He previously had used the old school acid "toasting" method, but switch to the leather dye late in his career. One good thing about the leather dye is that with enough applications, any of the brown/yellow varieties can eventually give yo a very dark color. The other good part is that a single coat penetrates fairly shallow, so you can "lighten" it up by fine sanding if you so desire. You can also get multiple colors on a handle like Jay Hendrickson does quite a bit.
 
There is always the urine and steel wool method.
Or maybe it was vinegar.
Put a pad of steel wool in a jar with vinegar and let it sit long enough for the steel wool to dissolve.
Then repeatedly apply the liquid to the wood to ebonize it.
 
Nic. said:
Use Aqua Fortis. It's an acid stain muzzleloader a use. It's beautiful! Then tru oil. It's the only way to go with maple that does the wood justice
Click to expand...

Yes! And as a bonus, you get to play with dangerous chemicals and fire....:)

But really, nothing beats the aqua fortis treatment for curly maple, IMO.
 
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