I’m starting to mill some white oak for the new pulpit and communion table for our new church building. The stock I have has a great amount of sapwood as it is flatsawn. On some of the boards I can cut the sapwood away and not lose much to scrap, but on the majority I will lose at least half of the board to sapwood scrap.
I had wanted to ammonia fume this piece when finishing, but I know that there aren’t much for tannins in the sapwood, therefore the fuming has no effect. Are there any straight forward methods of staining or dying the sapwood to come close to the color of the heartwood? Does anybody have any recommendations other than buying three times the amount of lumber needed?
All the best,
Chumpy
Replies
Chumpy
Several ways to go:
1) Leave the sap wood and choose a finish other than ammonia fume (maybe an alcohol stain)
2) Cut out the sapwood and buy more white oak
3) Do the ammonia fume, seal the wood and then try shading the lighter areas to suit the heartwood before doing the final finishing.
4) Leave the sapwood and do a natural finish. This can be very beautiful. If you apply boiled linseed oil first, before any other finishes, you will have a natural darkening of the wood.
Enjoy your project, JL
I know precious little about ammonia fuming or which species have natural tannins (other than Oak), but I tried fuming a piece of scrap Hazel Nut (member of the Birch family) a year or so ago just to see what would happen and it definitely darkened.
Assuming that members of the Birch family don't have much in the way of tannin, I'm wondering if the Oak sapwood might not actually darken, albeit not as much as the heart wood? If so then that still wouldn't even the colors out. But it might make for less work trying to even the colors out after fuming.
Kevin
Try a piece and see.
Many people reject the sapwood and heartwood mix in a panel, in their search for a homogenous look. I personally enjoy the differences and the character it adds to a piece of wood and the finished project. In the end it is all a matter of taste. Commercial furniture avoids sapwood. JL
I'm a fence-straddler when it comes to sapwood. Depends on the species. I don't usually care for it. But with some of the exotic woods where there is a really stark contrast then I really like it. African Black Wood has a sapwood that is a yellowish off-white, which looks very striking next to the nearly black heartwood. I bought a small slab off the side of a log a while back with the intention of making something utilizing the sap and heartwoods together in the same board. Now I just have to think of what it is that I want to do with it.
Straddling a fence too long is hard on the sitting apparatus, Kevin. :-)
Sapwood and heartwood combinations are not for all. I worked, and still do, in the industry. I have seen so many "vanilla" finishes (without interest) that my own penchant is towards the differences rather than the similarities. I also enjoy a 100% heartwood board with exciting figure, and would go for that in a heartbeat. JL
Now see I probably haven't been in the industry as long as you have, but I have increasingly found my tastes running exactly as you described. Just this afternoon I cut into a piece of very highly figured Black Walnut that I recently bought as a reject (shallow windcheck cracks along one edge) for $5 and it was definitely a thing of beauty even in it's raw state. Of course I don't know what I'm going to use it for yet.
I have a serious problem with collecting figured wood... even scraps! I even have 6 or 7 wooden paint stir-sticks which had some lovely figure at one end and I couldn't bear to obscure it with paint, so they sit in the top of my tool box collecting dust. And that's not even the worst of it. I found an old Hickory broom handle, darkened with age and use along one side, that is solid somewhat lightly figured wood from end to end and now it rests against a book shelf minus the broom part because I just couldn't bear the thought of not snagging it for some as yet undefined and unknown future use. I'll probably never use it for anything. But I do love just simply looking at figured wood.
Kevin
When the spirit moves you, you will take some of the wood you are collecting and build something very beautiful. I collected a cherry stump once, from one of our lumber suppliers. It is about 2 1/2 feet wide by 3 feet high, cut into 2 inch thick consecutive boards. It is all strapped together in sequence. One day I will do something with it. In the meantime it is collecting dust and now and then I think about all the potential projects I can do with it. JL
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