Okay, so I’m just about done. I’ve put the “last coat” on, and buffed it out with 00000 steel wool. Not too sure if I like it as is, or if I’ll add one more coat. It’s easy enough to do, so it’s no big deal.
But there’s one thing I’m unhappy about, and that’s the exposed end grain on the pins and tails. The end grain looks all dried out and kinda nasty. Check it out (click to enlarge):
I’m not sure how it got this way. Maybe I didn’t notice something happening on the several coats previous. Maybe I didn’t sand the end grain enough before I started. I don’t know. I’m not really sure how to fix it, except maybe to use a small brush or cotton swab to apply something (BLO? straight varnish?) directly to the end grain and only the end grain, until it looks normal. But would I need to do some micro-sanding first?
What do you think?
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July 11, 2008 at 7:13 am
Brandon
Eric, I am by no means an expert on this, but I wanted to give you an idea. I am not really sure if this works, but I have heard of people using a glue/water mixture to “paint” the end grain with when finishing. I think the idea is that the highly diluted glue will limit the amount of finish sucked into the end grain. This would then keep it more of an even color.
I do think this would be risky b/c I know how glue and finish don’t play well together. I would definitely research this technique and test it before applying to the box.
Hopefully the big dogs (Mark and Kaleo) will have a better idea.
July 12, 2008 at 2:02 pm
Kaleo Kala
Sorry wrong post, as for the end grain thing, the only way to strat to fix it would be sand the box back down. I have never tried the diluted glue trick. But it could work. We all know that end grain is going to soak up more finish, which is why it gets darker.
I don’t know how many coats of oil you have on there? But it looks like the finish is building up and oxidizing there on the end grain. Sand the box down and resand up to 400 to 600 grit. This might polish the end grain a bit, so that it doesn’t soak up so much oil. That’s the only thing that I can think of. I hope it helps.