I am new too woodturning, I started in February. After several projects, I made a 14 inch vase out of Mohagany that I took from a pew at my church. No I didn’t steal it. 🙂 The Church got new pews and I thought it would be a good use of the wood from the old pews.
My dilemna is what and how to finish this vase. Shellac, varnish, wax, toungue oil, etc., etc. etc. It’s all a foreign language to me. My only real experience in finishing is either using a stain and then for the most part, always placing several coats of MinWax Polycrylic Protective Finish on the piece. I don’t think that is going to cut it for this vase.
Any suggestions would be much appreciated. Remember, my desire is to have the highest luster/gloss on the vase as possible. Oh, in addition, does it matter to what extent you sand the piece? It’s currently sanded to 2000 grit. I liked the real smooth feel it has and looks great too. But when sanding to that extent, does that have an adverse affect when I finish the vase?
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First, for really high gloss the pores have to be filled. There are a couple of ways to do this. Ordinarily, I would think about a commerial pore filler, but mostly these need to be tinted, and that would likely distort the multiple colors of your mahogany, which I assume you want to preserve. Another althernative, which works especially well with the piece still on the lathe, is to use shellac, both to fill pores, and then to create a very high gloss finish. Of all the finishes you mention shellac, including most of the etc.s, has the highest potential for achieving a high gloss surface.
I would begin by applying several coats of 2 lb. cut shellac, spaced about an hour apart. When dry, I would sand this back, using 320 grit until you start to cut through the shellac, revealing the surface of the mahogany, except that you will still see shiny spots where the shellac is in the pores, but below the level of the surface. I would do a couple of sets of this, until just about all of the shiny spots disappear. Then I'd let it set for a week, to let the shellac shrink a bit more. Then I would complete the filling process to the point where you can sand the shellac without cutting through to bare wood, but with no more shiny spots. At this point, though you may have applied shellac 6 or 9 or 11 times, you will really have about 1 coat of thickness. I would then add another coat or two of shellac.
At this point you can begin the polishing process. Start by sanding with about 600 grit (CAMI) to remove any surface defects. Then jump to about 1200 grit (CAMI) and remove the sanding scratches from the 600 grit. (This will take a bit longer than running through all the grits, but you will remove less material.) At this point, you would shift to a polishing compound. Working through the polish compound sequence of the particular manufacturer, you would finish with something like swirl remover.
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