Burnishing

[Richard]

Have read somwhere about burnishing timber for a better finish. Is this the same thing as using a scraper?

[Mac Simmons]

Burnishing is to "rub".
Take a piece of brown paper, or the backing of a piece of sandpaper, and rub the wood or almost any coating. You could do this on your sander too.
Just rub the suface, and you will see how nice and smooth it makes it feel.
It leaves a very nice patina on the surface.

MacS

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[Shane Watson]

Using the back of sandpaper is a good technique to remove light overspray on finished pieces. Done just right it dosn't even affect the finish.

Cheers

Shane...

[Shane Watson]

I tell ya what stoppers, burning has crossed my mind more than once too http://ubb.ubeaut.com.au/ubb/smile.gif

Life can be cruel... And so can timber http://ubb.ubeaut.com.au/ubb/smile.gif

Shane..

[ubeaut]

Burnishing can give some very nice effects to some surfaces especially over gesso and for gilded work. (There are bone tools made just for this purpose.) However it can sometimes be a disaster waiting to happen especially if used on a surface that may come in contact with water.

Basically what you are doing is just compressing the grain of the wood, if this gets wet it can baloon up leaving a very undesirable surface.

Scraping is a cutting action (basically fine planing) however where the confusion may come in is that part of the sharpening process for a scraper is to burnish the edge of the scraper. This gives it a very smooth surface whilst rolling the edge to form the sharp cutting surface.

Hope this is of some extra help
Cheers
Neil

[Richard]

"OOOhhhh........Aaahhh",the wife says. "Are you doing something different?"

"Just rubbing Honey !!!", says I.


Thanks everyone for your help. Just completed a hall table this morning and have rubbed the heck out of it - and the extra effort has really paid off. Neil, thanks for clueing me in on the different burnishing - that of scrapers. In the "Handtools & Machinery" forum, RFNK mentioned a site having to do with Use and preperation of scrapers. It was a real eye opener to me.
mcs.net/~brendler/oldtools/scraping/scrapers.htm
Thanks again !!!!
Richard