Thread: Mahogany & Cedar bed - condensed WIP

Only managed a half-day in the shed, so not a lot of progress today. I managed to get two rub-coats done on all the parts, made 4 knobs, and glued up the doors.

As an aside: I find Cedar is odd stuff to polish. It all comes up ok in the end, but some pieces have really coarse pores that takes forever to fill, while some bits have much finer pores that fill quickly and are a breeze to polish. The two drawer fronts illustrate this very well - see pic for comparison. The top wood is as coarse as it gets, with those dark, porous lines that some cedar has, while the bottom piece is much finer, and looking really good already, after just two applications of polish.
You may ask me why I didn't use a grain filler? I used to use fillers, & have used both my own home-made brews and commercial stuff, but the last few years I have not done so, and just keep rubbing until it all levels out. Fillers certainly make it easier & quicker to achieve a dead level finish, but I have noticed that it also tends to deteriorate more quickly, and a sideboard I did using a commercial filler about 12 years ago has gone quite blotchy under the polish. This was a re-finish job on a very old piece, & it may be that something applied to the wood previously is causing the problem, so I am not necessarily blaming the filler. But filling with shellac seems to give the nicest finish in the end - fillers always dull things down, to my eye. It just means a lot more rubbing, and cutting back the surface build, and more rubbing, until those pores fill...

Another aside: One side of one table is covered in birdseye spots. These are distinct, tight little eyes like you get with Maple (pic 2). I've seen similar figure very occasionally in Cedar before, but it isn't common in my experience, and what I have seen was restricted to quite small areas. Has anyone else seen these in Cedar, and is it really as rare as I think, or is it common in some areas??

Cheers,