Thread: What machine causes this texture ?

Originally Posted by Cliff Rogers

Here are some pieces of good old Aussie hardwood.

Wire wheeled & oiled with Penetrol.

Do you have any descriptions of your process? I tried a wire wheel on a few pieces of wood - silky oak, pine, hardwood burl, and I couldn't get the effect like your photos. The different woods all came out pretty much the same, looking like they had been chewed away by the wire brush - scratched lines in whatever direction the wire wheel was going. Nicer result going with the grain, but still a very fine texture in line with the wood grain. I took up to about 5mm of the surface away to see if it would change going deeper, but it's still basically the same result.

I'm using a steel wire brush in a hand-drill. Should I try a nylon brush? I haven't seen them before, but I will take a look around.

Sand the tool marks out of the piece before you start with the wire wheel.

I have several different size/grade of wire wheels, most of them are fitted to a 4" angle grinder.

You need to play with it a bit to work out what works best on what shape and type of timber.

I also vary the pressure on the work and the stiffness of the brush like going down through the grades of sandpaper.

The high speed of the anglegrinder helps to polish the timber.

I sometimes used a sandpaper flapper wheel to polish the softer timber but generally I can manage to get a good polished texture off a finer wire wheel at high speed.

The pieces I'm testing on are dressed timber, so there's no tool marks. The wheel I have is fairly fine wire, but perhaps the speed is an issue. On the hand drill, the speed is comparatively low. I think each wire is following the groove of the one in front, rather than make their own groove, so I'm getting a series of very fine grooves in the wood. I might have to get a few different grades of wire, and use the angle grinder instead. Thanks for the tips - I'll try them out.

Had another go today with a handheld wire brush, and started to get some better results. After that success, I tried the wire wheel again and got much better results. In the end, it is a matter of technique. Originally, I was holding the wheel upright, so that the wires were following each other, and carving grooves regardless of the wood underneath. The hand brush was much more random, so didn't have the same problem. By tilting the wheel on it's side, so the wires are more side on, and moving it around a lot more into all different directions, I am seeing a result much more like yours, with a rough and polished surface. Unfortunately my little wire wheel has a big bolt sticking through it, so it's tricky to get the edge of the wheel without hitting the surface with the bolt. I'll still need to buy another wheel to do it properly, but at least I can see the concept now, and I'm happy with the results!