HELP!! Endgrain finish gone wrong

I am doing a job for a neighbor, who has a slice of an old hardwood house stump from the family home blown down by cyclone Yasi. It is roughly a flat cylinder with a hole in the middle where the the termites had eaten it out ie it is a piece of a log which has been cross cut, with 100mm high slices.

The neighbour wanted the end grain flat surfaces to be nicely polished with a glossy look and a circular rebate made in the centre for a photo.

The end grain on the timber was very hard and tight, and was magnificent after it was sanded down, lots of different colours in annular rings.

I coated both flat sides with Wattyl Scandinavian Teak Oil, and the flat end grain surfaces virtually went a very dark matt colour, and the beautiful end grain was lost :-

not happy , Jan!!

My questions are, 1) what should I have done to keep the grain showing and the original colours and 2) what are my options now?

I would appreciate all ideas and suggestions to help recover the situation.

PS. I do have access to a bandsaw which could take a thin slice off the top and bottom of the flat cylinder if all else fails

Hi Dengy,
You probably should have used a sealer on the end grain first. End grain has a habit of soaking up oil and darkening terribly. Perhaps the best option is to resand the face of the end grain and use a sealer to reduce the absorption of the oil. It may also be better to use something else to finish the end grain. I think others will tell you what's best.

Regards,

Rob

Ouch! My sympathies!

As a rule of thumb, if you wet the wood with water, it'll darken up to "as light a finish as you can possibly get" on that wood.

End-grain, being basically a set of straws, almost invariably wicks up more and goes even darker than the side grain, whether water or a finish... and most finishes will go significantly darker than water, especially oils.

I suspect that if you haven't used a sealer to fill/plug/seal the end-grain "straws" first, you'll need to slice quite a bit off the ends to recover the original grain colour. I don't know of any other way, sorry. :(

Perhaps you can slice just one end off one piece and see how it goes? That way, if you have to take off a lot you can leave the other end untouched and call that the back of the frame... thus maximising the thickness.

Anyways, as you've probably realised by now, you need to seal the end-grain first. I like to use thinned shellac, but I think any good NC pore filler would do the job... you'll probably need to experiment on an offcut to find something that you're happy with.

I'll keep my fingers crossed for ya. :wink:

edit: LGS takes it by a full length! That's what I get for bein' so damned verbose! :sigh:

Well,
I sanded it back using 40, 80 and 120 grit paper on my ROS, then wiped the surface with turps a few times, and left overnight. You can see the resulting photos below, where the oil has seeped down through some internal cracking.

How would it go if I just put shellac over it as is, because the oil will probably be deeper ?


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Hi Dengy,
Further to my PM. you may have to use this a best solution. You could try the turps again. Leave it on for about 5-10 minutes,, then wipe it off. See if you have pulled any of the oil out. If you have, then do it again. If not, I suggest you proceed along the sealing path straight away.

Regards,

Rob

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Dengue

Well,
I sanded it back using 40, 80 and 120 grit paper on my ROS, then wiped the surface with turps a few times, and left overnight. You can see the resulting photos below, where the oil has seeped down through some internal cracking.

How would it go if I just put shellac over it as is, because the oil will probably be deeper ?


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Attachment 257963

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Whenever I'm doing end grain I have found that you need to go higher than 120 grit as well as using a sealer to limit the take up of the stain or oil. With regards to the removal of the oil - don't know if turps will do what you require - I think you may need to get a little more aggressive with your solvent [perhaps metho, PVC pipe cleaner - MEK, acetone] but be aware that the more aggressive you get the greater the chance of bleaching - try on some scrap first rather than your good piece. It may also help to use blotting paper, kitty litter or similar when you decide on a solvent to help pull the liquid from the surface.

Just some thoughts.

Thanks for all the support and the suggestions, it has been terrific. At one stage I wanted to flood it with turps, and then set fire to it, but our wonderful neighbours would kill me :) They will never ask me to do any woodwork for them again :-

Tried the turps flooding without any success, then put some Prepsol on it, again without much success, so am about to take a 5mm slice off one surface with the son's bandsaw and see if the oil is less, but not very hopeful, as it appears that some of the oil has followed the gaps down along the annular rings, right through the workpiece. :-

No joy on the band saw. The blade grabbed the workpiece, which ran up the blade and rolled back at high speed, breaking off the cut piece, cutting into the varnished outer bark, and then ruining the $80 bimetal blade. Not a good week !!

My next step is to make a long carriage frame 450 x 260 inside dimensions, the height of the cylindrical workpiece, wedge the 260mm diameter slab in it, and run it through my 330mm wide thicknesser down to the bandsaw cut line, slicing away about 7mm across one face. Alternatively, I am halfway through making a ski sled for a router, have the surface planing bit, so might use that instead.

Any further suggestions or comments please?

That's it, I am off to watch the Cowboys play the Melbourne Storm at the local stadium, named after dental company 1300SMILE. How stupid is that.

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Not to be unkind but which team so i can bet on the opposite?

STOP....... Whatever you do don't add any more turps or solvent all you are doing id driving what's left of the oil further into the timber thus continuing to discolour deaper and deeper into the grain.

For end grain on red gum in fact any timber you are best to sand up to at least 1200 grit. eg: 80, 120, 180, 240, 320, 400, 600, 800, 1200 and if you can get it 1500 isn't out of the question.

Give the end grain a wipe down with methylated spirits and the colour it goes when wet is the lightest colour you will be able to get. Nothing other than bleaching will make it any lighter. White Shellac (dewaxed) is the best finish as it won't darken the timber any more than the wetting down with metho. and even if it does darken ever so slightly it will be far less than anything else.

Most oils will darken redgum dramatically and red gim end can go almost black and lifeless.

My suggestion:

• Sand through the grits up to 800 grit
• Mix 1 part White Shellac (dewaxed) with 8-10 parts of either 95% or 100 % Industrial Methylated Spirits (preferably 100% if you can get it) use this to wipe over the surface
• Allow to dry for a few hrs or overnight
• Sand again very lightly with 1200 grit to remove any roughness created by the above mix.
• mix 1 part of the full strength White Shellac with 4 parts meths and apply 1 to 2 coats allow to dry overnight.
• Sand again lightly with 1200 or if you have it 1500.
• Apply a coat of Traditional Wax allow to dry then buff with a clean soft rag, turning the rag frequently as you work. You can apply the wax a few times if you wish but need to leave a good drying period between coats. If you have the time leave for a day between applications.

You do not have to apply numerous coats of the wax and may find that one will do the job nicely.

If you want an even higher shine use EEE-Ultra Shine after the shellac and before the Trad Wax. You might even find that the shine from the EEE will be more than enough for what you want.

Hope this is of some help to you.

Cheers - Neil :U

PS Using just a couple of coats of shellac then the wax will give you the lightest possible finish and you may well find it could lighten even more once it is hard dry.

PPS Be very very very carefulif you do put it through the bandsaw. It looks like a dangerous piece to cut in the wrong or inexperienced hands.

I don't like your chances with the thicknesser idea. That could go really pear shaped. I'd probably just put it on my CNC router and face it that way but as it is unlikely you have one at your disposal, the next best and safest idea I have would be to make some sort of frame around it and then use a thick piece plywood and fix your router to it. The ply would need to be big enough to cover the frame entirely when the router is out to the edge of the job. I think that would work ok.

As far as finishing goes, I never apply oil direct to timber because you often get an uneven blotchy look. I always seal it first with a sanding sealer, sand then apply the oil with fine steel wool and rub to the desired finish. I've also seen a lot of these slabs done with a self levelling casting resin. You can leave that as a gloss finish or use oil and wool for a satin look.

Good luck with it.

Hi Pacman, true to my form this week, my NRL team, the NQ Cowboys , went down in screaming heap to the Melbourne Storm. To make matters worse, 80% of the play was at the opposite end of the field to where I was sitting behind the goal posts in the southern stand :(

Whatever you are trying to do to leach out the original oil finish, don'ty forget to put that face down against absorbent paper or cloth. You might as well get all the help you can from capillary action and gravity.
Open, dry, end grain wood celsl have a lot of air in them = lighter color. Replacing that air with finish will darken the wood. The best will be a sealer that changes the color the least. THEN, the surface you need goes onto that.

hi Neil, many thanks for these directions - they have given me peace of mind and confidence to proceed. Will be interesting to see how it finally turns out. Will keep you all posted

maggs, I agree with you about feeding it through a thicknesser. I am waiting to have some 12mm steel bars threaded on the ends to make a router ski. Will fit the router so that I have an overhead router that slides along the bars like shown here . I haven't made slots, but drilled vertically spaced holes on the end pieces so that I know the base of the router will be exactly level with the surface on which the end pieces travel.