Thread: Keeping the timber colour pure

I think I may not have stressed enough in my o.p. that this is marquertry - where you make up a thin sheet of mixed veneers, then glue that to a substrate. It isnt intarsia or inlay into solid timber. In my case I'm using commercial veneers. The sycamore is 0.64 mm thick while the ebony is 0.78mm - so I guess when I said they were of very different thicknesses I was thinking in the very small scale that one does with veneer.

Anyway, i bought some fresh shellac today so will try that tomorrow. I will also give the compressed air solution a go, and the acetone wash, and let you know what worked.

Cheers
Arron

Hi Arron

I still think that a scraper and shellac is the answer
shellac to protect the sycamore and the scraper to bring the ebony down to the same thickness

do you do the final thicknessing before or after you glue the marquetry onto the substrate?

if you were stringing with the ebony you could makeup a thickness gauge to rezise the ebony to the same thickness as the sycamore, but I'm guessing that the ebony shapes are irregular so a thickness gauge might not work

Arron, fwiw, I use a shaving brush to get dust out of the pores, followed by a wipe with white spirits or water. Works pretty well in most cases.
N.B. The timbers will always look a little dusty after sanding. A wipe with white spirits will show you how it will look with a finish applied. Be careful with compressed air, at high pressure it can tear up the grain, especially at sharp edges.

First off...outstanding job on the marquetry!

I've got a similar situation with an oak box with padauk corner keys. When sanding the sides of the box I got some red streaking into the oak. I've given it a wipe down with mineral spirits and that cleaned up most of it, but I'll need to figure it out before the final sanding and finishing.

I may give the scraper a go first and see how that comes out.

For the shellac, I wouldn't put that on until after you have fixed the problem. It might be a good way to stop this from happening in the first place, but if you seal it now, it's just going to seal in the problem! But I guess if it's a really thin mix, then it might soak in far enough to fill the pores past the problem, and allow you to sand away a thick layer and sand beyond the problem while the surface is still sealed. Maybe.

I love my cabinet scraper, but I've never managed to get a completely finished look from it, and I still have to sand some, and as you said, there's obvious hazards with scraping across thin veneer inlays with all different grain directions.

My pick would be an orbital sander with a vacuum attached. I always use this setup for my sanding, and it seems to work really well. The suction of air, plus vibration of the tool should do a great job of keeping the surface clean as well as getting the existing dust out of the wood pores.