Morning all, any advice from those who have experience working with Bubinga. I will be starting a project made entirely with the above wood using both shop sawn veneers as well as solid wood components. In advance of the project I wanted to know if there are any problems using conventional PVA glues with the joinery and if there are any problems to avoid when finishing the piece. I assume this wood to be oily when compared to the North American hardwoods I usually work with.
As always, any help would be appreciated. Thanks.
Ian
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I've just completed a big Arts & Crafts settle from bubinga. PVA works fine on it. The biggest issue with the wood is that it is very dense. I put some cutoffs in water, and they sank. The density means that planer blades dull faster. However, the high density means that you can polish the wood to a near-mirror finish if you want.
Thanks Jamie, any problems with tear out on the figured Bubinga, seeing as its so dense.
I don't think density has any effect on tear-out. What causes tear-out is sudden changes in fiber direction. Curly woods of any sort are prone to tear-out.
Glue has not been a problem in my projects using bubinga.
Plan on lots of scraping and or sanding to avoid tear out. Bubinga is hard, but brittle, and as an earlier poster mention, you can get tear out in figured parts.
If you are doing an oil/varnish finish, you can fill the pores nicely by wet sanding the second o/v coat to create a slurry that fills the pores. Shellac is also a good finish, depending on where the piece will be used, but filling the pores with shellac will take many more coats.
Enjoy. Bubinga is a nice wood to work with.
Ian, I have a project in the works now that I am using bubinga on, and I am just wondering why you want to saw your own veneers? I usually find better figure in veneers than is normally available in lumber form. If you are thinking of getting nice figured veneers after running thin re-sawn wood through your planer, the likelihood of hearing that dreadful sound of the planer eating the whole sheet should not be ruled out.
I have got my highly figured veneered parts glued up and sanded, and it looks great. I had my helper pick up some lumber last week for making some trim. What he brought back was a couple of boards which were figured, and had been run through my supplier's surfacing equipment. I know they are using heads with segmented knives, but the tear-out was awful. Their knives must have been extremely dull. I know I can probably get a better finish cut, but, I would not bet on running thin figured work through surfacing equipment where the grain run-out is through the thickness rather than down it.
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