Having just taken up spoon carving, I’m getting to the point where I’d like to make some posher varieties with a smooth and fine finish rather than with the knife facets of the more primitive versions. I read that burnishing the spoons is a traditional method …. but various website advice seems to vary.
Anyone out there with experience of burnishing wood as part of the finishing process? Basically it seems to mean squashing, rubbing and heating the wood surface to be burnished with a small tool having a rounded profile, made of stuff (wood or something else) harder than the wood being burnished.
Some relate a process involving pre-sanding and the use of burnishing creams or compounds. Others seem to opine that burnishing alone is enough …..
Would a burnishing tool of ebony, usually sold as one for burnishing leather, work on the typical spoon woods of apple, pear, maple, walnut or even basswood?
Any advice, especially from the experienced, about the process and the burnishing tools will be gratefully received.
Lataxe
Replies
Hi I've done some of that I used a antler tho I wouldn't use ebony for that it might leave black marks anything hard will work when a screw driver I have used polish like wax ECT it's nice but to get a really good look use a knife then a scraper to sever the wood fiber before you burnish it makes a huge difference
Since posting, the ladywife has acquired two small ebony burnishers for use in her leather work - the the advertised purpose of the tools. These are true Macassar ebony, well formed, smooth and hard. They seem to work well on goat willow spoons, with no transfer of any black stuff to the almost white willow. They also impart a sheen - eventually. :-)
Perhaps the burnishing effects are more or less evident depending on the wood being burnished; but on other factors like how that wood surface was left just before the burnishing begins - which brings me back to the original question.
At present I'm leaving some parts of a spoon (e.g. the bowl-back) with clean knife facets but scraping-smooth other parts such as the inside of the bowl and (sometimes) the handles. I read that some spoon carvers sand but many recommend attempting to get a finished surface with knife and perhaps scraper alone (then burnishing).
There's also roasting! 180 degrees centigrade for 20 - 30 minutes to induce some degree of browning (a chemical not a burning effect). Presumably this is the caramelisation of sugars (like Veritas maple plane handles & knobs) rather than a singe of the outside surface of the spoon.
I've not seen burnishing widely recommended as a technique in standard woodworking, even the fine variety - although there are burnishing creams sold which seem to be made of a very, very fine grit suspended in a semi-liquid or paste medium and intended as a final polisher for other finish coats such as oils and shellac.
Anyroadup, I'll continue experimenting with the spoon finishing to see what emerges. But I need to hunt down wood other than the goat willow chopped out of the garden. Fruit woods - they're the thing. I will accost some local tree surgeons.
Lataxe
I have carved only a handful of spoons, and finished all by sanding. My preference though is for flowing forms which lend themselves well to being sanded as final shaping.
Never tried it. Posting only to keep interesting question in top 6
Using a polissoir is a technique going back hundreds of years. Don Williams has written a lot about them. For many years he was the furniture conservator at the Smithsonian. You can start here: https://donsbarn.com/category/polissoir/
My thoughts as well.
That was a useful link and led to some others with a lot of info about the polissoir, including a PW UBoob vid and a lump of text + pics from an old British WW website associated with Furniture & Cabinetmaking magazine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5al4CtLFebU
https://woodworkersinstitute.com/techniques/2022/04/historical-furniture-finishes-the-wax-polissoir/
The latter shows pics of polissoirs made of tightly bound reeds or straw in various sizes, presumably for use in what Don Williams calls "the nooks and crannies" of furniture. Basically the straw ends and also their sides can be used to compress, heat up and insert wax into the pores of the wood surfaces being burnished.
For greenwood spoons and other treen, a common finish is one part beeswax mixed with two parts food-safe oil. (I'm using poppy seed oil, as it has no odour and little colour). The use of a burnisher or polissoir would seem to work best after the finish has been applied - perhaps even being used to final-polish the application of the oil+wax.
The ebony leather burnisher borrowed from the ladywife does seem to apply a sheen and shimmer all by itself (without any oil + wax). The sheen obtained looks like the sort of shine that a patina builds over time with multiple waxings and polishings. I'll try this burnisher after applying the oil +wax finish, though. Meanwhile, I'll look for or make a-one o' them polissoirs.
Lataxe
I've enjoyed this string; thanks to those contributing! When I first read this post, I thought of the recent FWW article on uzukuri finishing https://www.finewoodworking.com/2023/06/15/uzukuri-finish but it took me a while to find the article. It uses essentially the same tool as a polissoir, but more as an abrassive to remove softer wood and leave a textured wood grain surface. But burnishing is a part of the result. I'm curious as to whether a polissoir leaves a similar surface. It seemed more to leave a smooth polish in the video from above. The Japanese technique uses tools of varying courseness, with abrasion coming from the courser grades. In any event, Lataxe, I can't give you advice from experience, but perhaps a tool like this is worth experimenting with.
Lat-axe
Here are some Shou Sugi Ban spoons out of Osage Orange.
I stop the Shou Sugi Ban process at a dark cocobolo color. Osage Orange can be taken to a ebony black if desired.
The burnishing
John