And how would this rise? I know oil tends to seep, especially when warmed, so does that mean it soaks into the end grain and then re-emerges later to harden outside when I'm not looking?
You may have a point. I just picked up a piece of fairly clear maple into which I cut a contour and finished with 100% tung oil. It's badly roughened where the contour exposes end grain. And this is "young" maple as opposed to the very old maple scraps on which I'm practicing (and in which the grain direction is ambiguous). As opposed to the other woods, the roughness seems to be the color of (drum roll, please) cured tung oil. So in some cases at least it appears I'm getting seepage from the end grain.
Very well, the technique covers that: wipe it off as it seeps and before it hardens. Seems I need to pay more attention to these guys during long-term drying.
| though there may be some grain raising from any water in | the finish and/or wax solution, or moisture getting in | from exposed areas where the finish was buffed off.
Hm. That's worth a second thought. I live in Utah, so any airborne moisture is purely accidental. But I didn't consider the possibility of moisture stowing away in my waxes. Considering I've probably wet-sanded and/or buffed too aggressively, I can see how that would expose a bare area and raise some grain.
So I should sand less aggressively while building up the finish.
| Personally, I don't like wet sanding because it puts the | face material into the nice shadowy areas of pore. I feel | that a clear finish better fills those and leaves the full | character of the wood.
Agreed. The technique I'm trying doesn't make any guarantees about the final appearance, just the final feeling. The people I spoke to about their finishes didn't say anything about wet-sanding, just that they sanded up to grits resembling satin and then applied oil and wax. The wet-sanding approach came from a handout I picked up somewhere. The idea of a slurry filling the pores seems intuitively obvious, so I thought I'd give it a try.
But come to think of it, I have a towel rack that seems to already be mostly what I'm after. I made it long before my mind was corrupted by all this nuance. I heard of a guy who made fly-fishing nets whose wooden frames he finished only with tung oil. The moral was supposed to be the water-resistance and surprisingly durability of the finish. Anyway, I sanded a maple dowel down to 600 or 800 and then just did the "once a day, etc." application of tung oil. Since it's a dowel you can just work the oil in with your fist. After eight coats of that or so, I had what I wanted. Now I've put a wet towel on that thing every day for a year now and there's not wear, no raising of grain, and no discoloration. It's as smooth today as it was the day I put it up.
Maybe I'm just overthinking all of this.
I don't like trying to wet-sand with tung oil either. The stuff I've got is pure, unadulterated tung oil and it's way thick. Half the time the sandpaper just floats over a film of oil and the grit never seems to find the surface. That doesn't feel right. I'm going to try wet-sanding with some of the lighter Danish oils to see what that gives me. Everyone I've talked to swears you can wet-sand effectively with tung oil, but I think they must be using a lighter tung oil than I am.
| That's good. Most people will spend eons on the woodworking | part and expect a finish to go on and out the door the same | day.
I'm just doing it for me, so there's no profit to be lost. Even though it's a hobby, it's something I want to learn to do right. For me it's not about making money by selling clocks or furniture or croquet sets. It's about learning how to make something that looks great. And if that means sanding until your arms fall off and layering oil or varnishes or dyes or waxes or the secretions of some Guatemalan beetle until the shop smells like a Sumo wrestler's jock strap, that's what I'll do. I don't have a lot of money to spend, but I'm not opposed at all to spending time.
| Sanding finishes is way overplayed.
Probably. I've found there's a lot of room for individual preferences. Some people like certain looks and feels, and within each look and feel there's a whole gamut of methods to obtain it. At this point my approach is, "try everything and see what you like."
| I know that lots of "serious" woodworkers shy away from the | oils but I absolutely prefer them over other finishes.
As do I.
My parents, as I said, were big believers in oiled furniture. We had custom-made furniture and commercial furniture with oil finishes. Unfortunately the dining room table suffered through a year of careless renters and ended up with a number of water rings on it. One of these days I will undertake to repair that for them since they still have it. But I'll want to be more confident of my skills before I do anything like that.
Anyhow, my point was that the professional wood workers may shy away from oils not just for the time it takes to complete the finish, but also the perceived poor durability of the finish. Put a few coats of lacquer on something and you can dump Jell-O, coffee, or baby slobber all over it and it will just wipe off. People who commit to defending and preserving an oil finish seem to be in the minority, and so I can't imagine a lot of people who do this for a living will consider that a huge market segment.
| I don't like glossy, glaring finishes on 99.5% of items.
Neither do I. The stuff I'm making now for practice is just the simple desk and mantle clocks because the shaping is easy and it lets you concentrate on the nuances of the finish. But they can still be sold or given away as gifts. On these pieces I prefer a satin or dull finish with a very smooth feel. But of course you'll find someone who likes the finish whether it looks like it's coated in glass or whether it looks like bare wood. Ideally I'd like to be able to do all kinds of finishes, regardless of my personal taste.
Speaking of pianos, I've seen all kinds. I think the black stage models look good in either a shiny or satin livery. And one of the most striking finishes I've seen on a piano is a light neutral brown dye over an open-grained hardwood with a very thick satin-rubbed clear coat. You can't keep your eyes or your hands off of it. Not your typical piano, but it fits very well into its environment (a church). Unfortunately it has been damaged; it was near a window through which a vandal threw a brick. The brick bounced off the lid of the piano and chipped the clear coat badly. The wood underneath is undamaged, and thankfully there's an insurance payout to have it repaired.
I've even seen pianos with the grain texture preserved. I see value in both philosophies: fill the grain v. keep the grain. I figure I should learn how to do both effectively.
| Give Waterlox a try. It's tung oil with varnish. It works just | like Watco but builds about 5 times quicker and stinks less.
I'm beginning to think I've just got a bum bottle of tung oil. I'm pleased with how it has worked in some cases, but I'm not pleased with how it has facilitated what I'm doing now. But part of my experimentation plans call for using different types of oils. I'm not married to 100% goopy tung oil; it was just praised by someone who seemed to know what he was talking about.
| Ayup. Give her a few coats over a few days, wait a week, give | her a really good buffing, then see what she looks like. Go | from there.
When you say "buff" what exactly do you mean? Is this soft-cloth buffing like what you'd do on hardened wax, or is this de-nibbing lightly with some very fine abrasive? I've had a lot of people tell me to "buff", but I'm never exactly sure what that entails.
| Or dry sand S L O W L Y and L I G H T L Y . You just want | to take the nibs off, anything which feels like a sharp bump.
I'm trying to pay very close attention to sanding.
| G'luck! And do post pics on ABPF.
Okay, but no laughing. :-)