Thread: Keeping the timber colour pure

I don't know how to avoid this as the ebony is much harder than the sycamore and the ebony dust will drive itself into the softer timber the only way would be to find a pale timber that is almost as hard as ebony a difficult task I think. Possibly the only way if you have already used these material's would be to plane it if it is thick enough to do so.
Regards Rod.

Hi,

Is the "post"sanding picture taken just after sanding, or after the surface has been wiped down with Acetone, Turps or Methanol? If not, then try using some acetone to remove the dust from the surface.
If this doesn't solve your problem, then maybe you could think about sanding before assembly, so that all you have to do afterwards is to apply your desired finish.

Regards,

Rob

Hi Arron, I assume you are using ROS with dust extraction? Just asking as you didn't say how you sanded and I think it is important that anyone who wanted to assist might want to know. I am curious as to what other responses you may get as I am on the verge of doing some inlay and marquetry projects also.

I do like your idea of strong contrast and hope you can resolve it. Good work.
Cheers, Ian

Ok, following up on some questions asked.

The sanding I did was by hand - just using a sanding block.

After I took the photos, I tried various combinations of scrubbing, dust blowing and fluids. There was some improvement, maybe 60%, which is still a long way from crisp and clean.

I did think about applying some type of finish first - perhaps sanding sealer. The problem i forsee here is that, because of the different thicknesses of the veneers, then sooner or later I'm going to have to sand them pretty hard to get them down to the same level. At that point, the finish will be gone from one or both of the veneers, so the problem will still occur - just a bit later in the finishing process.

I know I'm making this hard by using the whitest possible timber with the darkest possible, but other people do achieve it, I've seen some stunning examples. So how do they do it ?

Try giving the work a liberal coat of fairly thin shellac before sanding. The shellac soaks in, filling the pores, and sets. Then sand as desired, and clean with white spirits.

Originally Posted by AlexS

Try giving the work a liberal coat of fairly thin shellac before sanding. The shellac soaks in, filling the pores, and sets. Then sand as desired, and clean with white spirits.

Will do. Will the readymixed shellac bought at Bunnings do ?

And one more question - is there any advantage in using shellac over using sanding sealer ?

cheers
Arron

Could you just sand it as normal then give it a good blow down with compressed air? I'd think that 120psi should blow any dust out of the pores.

Originally Posted by Arron

What can I do to keep the different timbers from contaminating each other when sanding ?

Here's the problem. Below is a simple piece of marquertry. The strong contrast between the white veneer (sycamore) and the dark veneer (Macassar ebony) is whats important to me.

leaves1.jpg

Sooner or later I have to sand it. In this case, it'll be a lot of sanding because the ebony is thicker then the sycamore. This is what it looks like after sanding. The white sycamore has contaminated the ebony, and the ebony dust has been driven into the pores of the sycamore, so altogether its lost its crisp, high contrast look.

leaves2.jpg

How do you prevent this ??

cheers
Arron

have you tried using a card scraper?

Re. the shellac - mind you get the bleached stuff, the normal will colour your sycamore.
+1 for the scraper.
Mark

I'd go with the U-beaut white shellac. Take the material down as close to the same level as possible, use the shellac then sand. I use shellac as my sanding sealer, not sure how other sealers would go, try it on a bit of scrap.

I thought people used a cabinet scraper in this situation instead of sanding??

Awesome work by the way

One problem with using a cabinet scraper is that this is marquetry, so you have grain going in every direction, and softwoods up against hardwoods.

I also worry about the scraper catching the edge of and dislodging some of the very small pieces of veneer - though I suppose one could say that if it comes off then it was loose anyway.

cheers
Arron

I also should mention that due to pre-existing hand injuries I cant really use a cabinet scraper for long. Probably need to use a sander, and machine sanding at that.

cheers
Arron

What if you were to use a ROS or small power planer and a pair of digital callipers to set the depth of each piece of timber before cutting the shapes and mounting the Ebony into the other timber? Your depth would be the same for each part and the pieces would be sanded to the grit of choice. No dust in the wrong place. Everything the colour it should be.

Regards,

Rob