Sticker Bands on Air-Dried American Elm

pezeshki | Posted in Peter Gedrys on January 28, 2007 08:44am

Hi Peter,

I have a small problem that I need some help with.

I’m currently building a dining room table out of quarter-sawn American elm. The elm comes from trees that were planted by some of the original pioneers to the Walla Walla, WA area, and the sawyer did an excellent job of drying and re-sawing the wood so the planks are beautiful. I call it “guilt-free old-growth” — some of them were 18″ wide!

The problem is that there is some slight bleaching from where the wood was stickered– it was air-dried. It’s not super-noticeable (I’ve had maple that has well-defined blue bands from stickering) but you can tell if you look. Any hints during finishing that I could use to even up the appearance?

Best,

Chuck

Replies

peter28 | Jan 30, 2007 04:54pm | #1
Hi Chuck,

They sound like some beautiful boards. I've restored a number of French antiques that were built out of elm and they quite distinctive.

I would suggest doing a couple of samples. A dye will even up the bleached areas pretty quickly. I favor water dyes while others prefer NGR's. If you use a water dye, remember to wet the wood to raise the grain. Do your first sanding, clean it, wet it down and after it dries, sand off the fuzz.

Often a treatment with a dilute yellow dye will even things out quite nicely. W. D. Lockwood makes a water dye called medium yellow that is invaluble for this type of work. I'm sure all the other suppliers carry one too. I'm just very familiar Lockwoods product. If you don't want to mix your own dye try something like Trans Tint. It is very concentrated so you can dilute it quite a bit.

Apply the dye liberally, let it soak in and then wipe it evenly. If using a water dye, let it dry and you can add another stain or any finish right on top.

Let me know how you do.

Peter