Avoiding glitter finish on red cedar

[Dengue]

Hello, I am making a box with silky oak sides and a red cedar lid, both being open coarse grained timbers.

I am trying to retain the original red/brown lid colours as much as possible, so have sanded to 320grit, washed the surfaces down with White Spirits to remove any dust. I then just applied two coats of Kunos #244 oil, thinned 50% with the recommended Livos Svalos thinner. I then brushed the thinned oil on generously, allowing it to dry for a few minutes, then wiped the oil off vigorously with a clean cotton rag. There was no other surface preparation.

The problem is that when viewing into the light, the surface of the timber is fully covered with hundreds of little glitter points which seem to cover the grain lines. I suspect it may be caused by either little air bubbles in the coarse grain, or the oil in the deeper parts of the pores drying differently to the surface oil. Difficult to capture with the camera angle, depends on the angle of the lighting to the lens. But the whole surface, both silky oak box sides and red cedar lid, are covered by these little glitter points

I had this problem once before, ages ago, but I thought it was caused by the de-waxed shellac I had used as a grain filler and sealer, so gave that a miss this time.

Has anyone else come across this problem? I would be interested in suggestions as to how this was caused, and what I should do to overcome it in future.

Also, what is the best way to proceed from here with this timber?


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[Kuffy]

Looks like the timber has regurgitated the oil from the pores and then dried. Happens to me with hard burnishing oil, danish oil, BLO etc. If the oil isnt sticky, u can keep wiping it down. HBO regurgitates for days it seems. Danish oil gets sticky fast so I sand back with 3000 or 4000 grit after it has dried 24hrs later.

No idea how to prevent other than stopping the oil penetrating the surface, so im interested to see how/if others can avoid it.

[LGS]

Looks like the timber has regurgitated the oil from the pores and then dried. Happens to me with hard burnishing oil, danish oil, BLO etc. If the oil isnt sticky, u can keep wiping it down. HBO regurgitates for days it seems. Danish oil gets sticky fast so I sand back with 3000 or 4000 grit after it has dried 24hrs later.

No idea how to prevent other than stopping the oil penetrating the surface, so im interested to see how/if others can avoid it.

Kuffy,
There should be no HBO or problems with the right Danish oil either, seeping back up through the wood. I use these oils for 90+% of finishes on all kinds of timber, including Red Cedar (Surian) You are using too much oil and allowing it to seep into the grain probably for too long. It will take quite a while for the oil to resurface and dishearten you greatly.

If you are interested, I'm happy to go through the method with you in my workshop. I'm up around Heidelberg. No charge, just bring a sample of a timber you'd like to see finished.

Regards,

Rob

[Kuffy]

I have seen your HBO method Rob, seems pretty much the same as me, which is pretty much as stated on the can.

dry sand to 400grit.
liberally apply the HBO to everything that needs it and let it soak in for 30mins.
wipe it off with rags
couple of hours later re-apply again
15mins later hit it with the ROS from 400->4000 or whenever I like the sheen or when I get tired.
is there anything majorly different that i might have missed?

This has it regurgitate. I dont know if it is the tung oil or the citrus solvent coming back up. Mostly I see it on the sapwood of spotted gum, the heartwood gets almost none. sapwood also raises up slightly 3weeks later when the tung oil has cured which is easily knocked back down with the ROS. I found after I finished burnishing if I leave the piece out in the sun, it makes the orange citrus smell go away much faster otherwise it makes my house stink for weeks

for danish oil, I just apply it, 10mins later or before it is sticky I wipe it off. I do this at 24hour intervals until Im happy.

Rob, have you ever applied the oil to a hardwood sapwood area? or do you actually remove any sapwood from the job unlike me being too cheap to waste good timber

[router]

It seems to me that you are trying to fill up open grain with oil which can be very difficult.

If it were me i would sand the surfaces down to a smoother flatter finish then seal the surfaces either with shellac or sanding sealer and then try re oiling the surfaces.

With open grain with deep grooves in it even though you are rubbing the oil off you cannot get down into the bottom of the groove and the oil that is then left behind expands and you will get your glitter.

It would be good to know how you get on.

Good luck


Router

[Dengue]

I have sent an email off to Fine Wood Working magazine, and got a reply from Mike Pekovic:

"This is a common problem when using an oil-based finish such as the one you describe on open-pored woods. The finish has a tendency to bleed out of the pores for quite a while after application. If you don't keep an eye on it and wipe it off on occasion before the finish dries, you are left with dots of finish in the pores. A solution might be to apply a second coat and sand it with fine sand paper while the finish is still wet to remove the dots of finish. Be sure to wipe the surface dry afterwards and keep and eye out for further bleeding."

Sounds very much like what router said above, great minds think alike, eh?

So I started researching "bleeding" and found the following article by Bob Flexner which has a rather familiar looking photo. I also found an article on it where Bob replied to a query in FWW #74 back in 1989. Both are worth reading.

So am now going to take router's advice and:
1. sand it back lightly ( this is resawn veneer with epoxy glue, so cannot cut back too much),
2. apply a coat of Ubeaut de-waxed shellac 1 part shellac, 5 parts metho ( not high water content Diggers stuff), then sand very lightly back to the top surface of the timber
3. apply another coat of Kunos Oil
4. wipe the finish every 15 minutes initially , then half hourly while it is drying to get rid of any bleeding


Will keep you informed on how it goes

[AngelaPetruzzi]

Good morning Dengue
I would probably suggest trying the different methods on an offcut first to see which will work the best as you certainly haven’t got muchscope to sand back. Also, different products may work together...or may not.
It appears that the oil is pushing back as it has nowhere togo. Try, once sanded and ready to oil, wiping over with the Kunos, no thinner. Wipeon, leave only for a short period of time before wiping off. Try just 5 minutesin this case. This means theoil/wax/resin mix does not penetrate too deeply and the pores are sealed higherup....eliminating the push back/bleeding. Then a very light buff back and applyanother thin coat the next day. I would not suggest this on something thatwould receive a lot of wear and tear such as a table top but on a beautiful boxsuch as yours, I think it should work. If not let me know and will investigatefurther. Good luck.

[Dengue]

Thanks everybody for your help and support.

I ended up rubbing the box with fine steel wool, (as distinct from 0000 or Extra Fine), and all the glitter from the 1st two coats disappeared.

So I liberally coated the box again with Kunos #244 oil, rubbed it in with 0000 steel wool and wiped it dry with a clean rag. No glitter, but 15 minutes later it appeared

Rubbed the box dry every half hour for the next 5 hours, removing any glitter breaking through.

Any new glitter stopped forming first on the the silky oak , before the red cedar, but by evening there was no glitter forming on it either.

Next morning there was no new glitter overnight, and there was a soft satin feel to the box, so that would do.

I took the red cedar lid out in the strong tropic sunlight. The grain is black, seen as long fissures in the red-brown coloured timber surface, and if you looked very carefully you could see that some of the oil had dried along the sides of the fissures, and gave a shiny appearance, depending on the angle of the light. But examining it indoors under strong fluo lighting, this shiny surface was not visible, so I am happy with this. I could smear another coat of oil to increase the lustre of the box, but I think three coats will do.

The actual feel of the lid on fingertips is smooth, but you can feel the grain fissures with your fingernail if you run your fingernail across the grain i.e., it is not a dead smooth piano finish as the grain has not been filled before oiling

I am wondering if next time I should use a few coats of shellac (1:3 with pumice powder as used in French Polishing) to fill the black grain holes, or will the shellac glitter

Photos of final box assembly to be posted soon