Stupid pet tricks

[B a r r y B u r k e J r .]

Fellow 'wreck'ers.

I thought I'd share a serious mistake I made this week.. Feel free to laugh!

I built a birch built-in bookcase for a friend. This particular piece is birch ply with solid birch trim, nice flutes, etc... It really came out nice! The wife of the recipient wants a color similar to really old, dark cherry, with a just a touch of an extra tint towards red. She was thrilled with my sample boards, finished with Mohawk (Behlen) products.

We all know how birch is a bear in regard to blotching, so I carefully spit coated the bookcase with 50/50 Seal Coat. The first treatment of pigment stain came out HORRIBLE, GROSS, not suitable for a trailer park! All kinds of blotching and generally UGLY! The thing looked like a really bad, Dark Walnut, pineywood, polyshaded mess!

I retested my finishing schedule using scraps from the ugly piece, and my new samples came out just like the original samples, beautiful!

What happened? My spit coat container and my spit coat brush cleaning containers got switched. I spit coated with shellac colored alcohol!

I spent all today building another.

I'm now trying to find a home for a painted version of the same piece.

Barry

[Edwin Pawlowski]

No laughs from me. I'm terrible about labeling jars. I grabbed the wrong one a couple of times but so far have not made a "fatal" error. If I don't wise up, it will happen.

Bet it brushed on easy though ;)

[Jerry Gilreath]

Whew, I thought I was the only one that done that kind of thing. Pretty much happened to me with a pair of nightstands for my nephew and new niece (in-law?)

[J.B. Bobbitt]

That'd be a "stupid human trick". Letterman has had both on his show.

Not that I'm critical; I'm perfectly capable of such tricks on my own.

-JBB

[Oregon]

Opportunity for me to learn something: Please define "spit coat". O.

[Nova]

A "spit coat" is a dilute mixture of clear dewaxed shellac usually in a 1 to 1.5 lb. cut. A 1 lb. cut being one pound of shellac dissolved in one gallon of alcohol.

-- Jack Novak Buffalo, NY - USA (Remove "SPAM" from email address to reply)

[Anthony Diodati]

[B a r r y B u r k e J r .]

AKA a wash coat.

It's a thin pre-coat of shellac, or sometimes sanding sealer, used to prevent stain from over penetrating certain woods, and to prevent one layer of finish with interacting with the next.

Dewaxed shellac is a universal barrier. Spit coating can often even allow you to reverse a finishing step, if necessary.

Birch, cherry, and pine are popular woods that take stain terribly if nothing is used to control the penetration. Some use Turpentine, Pre-stain Conditioner, or other commercial products. I prefer a simple thin shellac coat between each color coat.

Make sense? Barry

[Lazarus Long]

Labeling jars? Who does that? ;)