I recently finished a sofa table made out of cherry. I was real proud of myself as this was one of my first “real” pieces of furniture until I stained it. I had read all about how cherry is difficult to finish and such and thought I had a handle on this before I started to finish the table. I used 100, 200 and 400 grit paper to get a real smooth finish. I decided to use multiple coats of tung oil and it came out very nice with a beautiful luster cherry is known for. BUT, there were a few areas where the glue showed.
Does anyone know of a technique for seeing what the cherry will look like BEFORE the finish goes on? I didn’t try to wet the cherry before hand as I didn’t know what this would do to the grain. Should I have tried to wipe the cherry with mineral spirits or something else to identify the areas where the splotches (in this case glue marks) are going to be?
Thanks!
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After you think you are finished sanding, wipe the project down with mineral spirits, naphtha or alcohol. All will preview the color of the wood, highlight sanding miscues and indentify glue globs. All will evaporate leaving no residue. In addition, wiping it down with a chemical is much safer than using a tack rag. The mineral spirits is the slowest evaporating while the alcohol is the fastest.
Hi Bear. I've been using Naptha lately to "inspect" just-sanded wood and I really like it. Evaporates very quickly, but shows problems well.
Would suggest that you use this experience to motivate you to always, always save some stock for finishing test boards when you're using a different wood (from your past experience) or a finishing process that is different in any respect. I've learned this lesson the hard way. It may seem expensive, time-consuming, or both, but after you've put hours and hours into making a piece of furniture, a little time and $$ more added to prevent a disaster is well worth it.
forestgirl -- you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)
Forestgirl, I'm proud of you...Whenever you made this discovery (presumably years ago) it truly marked one of the rights-of-passage from groping amateur to skilled artisan...(took me more than 20 years to figure that one out.)
The problem with cherry, though, is once you discover the glue marks, you've got to be real careful about getting them out. The least bit of heat caused by high speed abrasion tends to make the natural gum in cherry darken...and you've usually got to remove a fair amount of wood to get below the penetration of the glue. Getting those dark gum marks out is worse than dealing with the glue. I've found that when working with cherry, it is far better to use a scraper when you get down to the short strokes in the finishing process. A last light touch with about 400 grit sandpaper (sanding slowly by hand) then allows you to blend out any slight scraper marks.
Cherry is stunningly attractive and it has just about ideal shaping characteristics...but that gum sure can leave you with a haunting problem.
Hmmmm.........never thought of using the scraper. Guess I will give this a try. I did try to make sure I never sanded the cherry too much at one time (always by hand of course) as it is SO, SO easy to burn it and get things gummy. The scraper idea might just be the trick.
Thanks Jon Arno! I'll let you know if I succeed in the "rights of passage" travels working with cherry!
We should all learn something on each project. I think most of us have many ideas for different projects, and each one may highlight certain problems to be overcome. I have learned something from every project I have done and there always seems to be something that I could have done better.
Just a thought.
Thanks Forestgirl.
Yeah, I had an extra piece of the cherry I was working with for this table. I was spending the time and energy to cut it and sand it so that I could stain it before I started on the table. I had read quite a bit about cherry being a problem with splotches. Any way, I stained this extra piece first and was really happy with the way the tung oil took to the cherry. The I started on the table. But, even after making sure I tried the stain out on a scrap I had no idea how cherry could show the glue. There was no way I could see it when I was done sanding as it only showed up after I applied the first coat of tung oil.
Now I have to sand down the areas where the glue shows and hope that I can get a consistent look afterward.
Or maybe I won't worry about it as I am probably the only one that will ever notice it.
Ooooo, bummer! Seems like when just when you're well-prepared for one monster, another one comes up from behind and chomps! Good luck with whatever you decide to do!forestgirl -- you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)
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