zebrawood

I am making a small table top with zebrawood. What is the best way to fill it for finishing? Ted

Reply to
Ted Cary
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ROTFLMAO

Paint.

Reply to
Leon

Leon responds:

Maybe so. Zebrawood is harder than oak, but a slurry of whatever finish is chosen, thinned a lot, and sanding dust (wear a mask! This stuff is nasty), is probably the simplest to do. Wipe with and cross grain and then wipe off quickly.

Charlie Self

"Republicans understand the importance of bondage between a mother and child." Dan Quayle

Reply to
Charlie Self

According the Hardwood Association handbook on hardwoods ($10, very well spent), virtually all the properties of zebrawood are nearly identical to white oak. However, the coloring isn't a easy to deal with...I'd bite the bullet and build up the finish with many coats and much rubbing out between coats.

Reply to
George

or fill with clear epoxy, like MirroCote(sp)?

-if it's OK to look like it was dipped in plastic!

James snipped-for-privacy@rochester.rr.com http:// snipped-for-privacy@breck.org

Reply to
brocpuffs

I am responding very late to this message, but I thought that my answer could be useful to some, so here goes. I built a zebrawood bar for a client who was raised in South Africa and who had his heart set on it. I was ignorant of some of zebrawood's difficulties at the time I started, which was probably a good thing. I did learn that zebrawood's reputation is somewhat worse than its actual working qualities. However, don't try to shape with either a router table or a shaper. It has an interlocking grain that literally explodes when a cutter gets into it. I ended up simply dimensioning on the jointer and planer, taking very shallow cuts, and then sufacing at the drum sander. This wood behaves very well in a drum sander. I surfaced by working up through 220 grit and then using the random orbit sander on corners and edges.

A side note: I was also able to turn it quite succesfully, although it did burn some of my tools a bit. You can see the turnings in bar rails and in the wine bottle opener handle at the link below.

For finishing, we just applied 4 or 5 coats of waterlox, with only minimal rubbing between coats. The resulting finish turned out to be a beautiful satin, and we did not see any need for filling of grain. The results, which can be seen at

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, speak for themselves. By the way, the bar is trimmed in black walnut, which is also used in the main parts of the rails.

I hope this is useful to someone, if not the original poster.

Bob Meppelink

Reply to
Robert Meppelink

Wow. There must have been a fortune of lumber in that bar.

Reply to
Roy Smith

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