I am in the process of building cabinets for my sons new home. I am using maple milled from trees that were logged off of his property. He also had hardwood flooring material made from the same trees. Problem is that when the mill kiln dried the wood he used stickers that leached something into the wood and now the finished product has black lines approx. every 2 feet that go cross grain. I don’t know what kind of wood he used for sticker material but apparently it was the WRONG stuff. I have about 80 % of the face frames and doors done. He tells me that the flooring wood has the same thing. Does anyone know of a way out of this dilema short of scrapping the wood and starting over ?? HELP PLEASE.
WMeek
Replies
To the best of my knowledge there is no cure for those marks that were made by poor sticker practice. They are not just on the surface and will not plane out. I have bleached them with mixed success, but the match with the surrounding wood is not good enough to allow a clear finish.
I know this isn't the answer you were hoping for. Consider a finish dark enough to mask the stains.
DR
Sad to say you're stuck with them. This was a mill owner who stacked and stickered the wood? Sheesh! He owes your son some $$. There's no excuse for screwing up like that.
forestgirl -- you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)
Another proud member of the "I Rocked With ToolDoc Club" .... :>)
I was afraid that was the answer. I agree , the mill owner should know how to go about kiln drying wood and NOT leave marks. He says it is a kind of a mold in the wood from it not drying where the stickers were. Seems to me he needs to do some serious evaluating of his processes. Thanks for your help,
WMeek
Here is an interesting WoodWeb article on sticker stain, and it discusses maple specifically. I have no idea how reliable the author is. You might want to re-enact my Google search on "sticker stain" kiln (include the quotation marks) and see what else pops up. There was at least one gov'mnt paper, and one that addressed the responsibilities of the kiln owner, etc.forestgirl -- you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)Another proud member of the "I Rocked With ToolDoc Club" .... :>)
I've heard that you should use the same species to sticker wood when it's wet so there won't be any reaction. In Maple and Ash it seems you are stuck. The only way out is to hope you can plane it out. Certain pieces of Maple can have a tendency to have brown splotches that look like someone dripped coffee on the wood. These splotches usually are pretty much throughout the board.
There are more old drunkards than old doctors. Ben Franklin
If you're still talking to the goon that discolored your maple, ask him if he used wet oak to sticker. It sounds like this guy just grabbed some tannic rich wood for spacers and forgot about it. That's just too bad. My thought was like the other reply: maybe you could stain it darker to mask the f... up. ??
I somehow managed to work around the marks, milled and lost a lot of wood in the process but got all th face frames and doors /drawers made. I think that where the problem is really going to show up is in the floors when they get sanded down for finish. He is having to use all the flooring material that was milled, Keeping our fingers crossed at this time. Thank you all for your responses ( and sympathies )
Wmeek
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