Replies

1. 
   joinerswork | Jun 28, 2011 06:15pm | #1

   Hi Steve, and tenderfoot,

   I am thinking that chatoyance is directly related to the grain direction of the wood,and so, while it is not the same as figure, in a wood like curly or fiddleback maple, figure is a factor.

   What causes the color shift is the way light is reflected or absorbed by the surface.  So that a board with its grain (fibers) uniformly inclined thus ////// will look dark from the right side (as if you were looking into the end grain) and lighter from the left, where the light striking from that side is reflected, not absorbed. 

   Seems to me that wood with strong, regular curl ///\///\///\ will have a good chance of having strong chatoyance.  Remember the Cracker Jack prizes that showed one picture when looked at from one direction and another picture from another direction?  Chatoyance. If the wood grain is irregularly arranged ///=//====//=/===/\ the chatoyance will not be striking or regular (blotchy).

   Soft or hard maple?  In my experience, soft maple has a tendency for broader curl, with a gentler transition from one stripe to the next.  The really tight (closely packed) curl seems to me to be found more often in hard maple.

   Ray

2. 
   xmike | Jun 30, 2011 10:29am | #2

   My experience is with soft maple which I order from my supplier as "figured maple".  It's actually cheaper than non-figured maple as it's a PITA for a cabinet maker in the business of making a lot of stuff, fast.  It's a PITA for him/her because power jointers and planers cause pretty dramatic tearout unless you have a SHARP set of cutters on your HELICAL cutter head.  Then it only tears out about half of the time.

   In my experience, those things that cause "pop" such as dyes or weak nitric acid, obscures the chatoyance effect and kills it's shimmer. 

   I make a big deal about helical cutters because I want a set.  Failing actually having them I throughly mist the wood with water just before sending it through my jointer and then through my planner to reduce machine tearout.  When the blades are nice and new and sharp this works very well to reduce tearout and does not cause rust in my machinery.  Then I hand plane all show surfaces to remove the machine tool marks, using a SHARP high angle on my plane blade (55 degrees).  Done corectly no followup sanding is required, which is good because a hand planed surface does not fuzz with my wash coat of shellac like sanded surfaces do, and hand planed surfaces seem to show off the chatoyance to good effect.  I treat both sides as a potential show side through the shellac wash coat phase. 

   At tha point I hold each piece up to the light to see which side "shows" better, and whether better with one end/edge oriented up or down, and then mark that on the now non-show side. 

   Then I finish with at least 3 coats (it usually takes 4) of gloss Pratt & Lambert no. 38, well sanded between coats to achieve a flawless surface that isn't so thick that it looks like bar topping has been applied. 

   Chatoyance shows through the gloss coat very well, and not so well through a satin one in my experience.

   Hope this is useful to you.