Thread: Silky Oak's hungry pores

Hi Barry,

I don't own a thicknesser, if I did I think my neighbours might throw rocks at me. I do all my thicknessing down on my De Walt table saw, can thickness up to 150mm of timber by doing it twice, 75mm each time. Then I dress it to the required thickness on my home made drum sander. I did make a nice silky oak box recently, I found that for the final sand, I use my Triton ROS, working up to 800 grit. Then a couple of coats of my home made Danish oil, second coat cut in with 1200 W&D, (wet), then a couple of coats of buffed wax, gave me a very nice finish on the silky oak.

Hi Barry and welcome to the forum. Sounds to me like you only have three options with this and depending on how bad the tear out is you may have to use multiple applications of 1. or 2. to get an acceptable result.

1. Grain filling sanding sealer - These are primarily for filling the pores of open grained timber rather than tear out. Try not to slap it on too thickly or you'll be lining up a lot of sanding for yourself. Shellac makes a great sending sealer but has almost no grain filling capability.

2. Use the diluted shellac, but add a small amount of pure talc to the mix to give it better gran filling capability.

3. Sand the surface back until the tearout has been eliminated. Sorry about that, I hate sanding too!

Only you can decide on the route you take with this but I hope this helps.

Cheers,
David

Depending on how bad the tearout is, you may be able to hide it using cabinetmakers' wax sticks.

Hi Barry

I think your first step is to look at your thicknessing technique to try and avoid tear-out at the start.
Are the blades on the thicknesser really sharp?
Can you make the final few thicknessing passes with a well tuned and sharp hand plane? or drum sander ?

Then I think your first few coats of shellac are too diluted for the amount of pore filling required.
and I concur with Aldav's suggestion to add talc to your finish till teh pores are filed.

Many thanks for each of your kind responses
Like all woodworking 'character building' challenges it will seem so simple when I win - Like learning to ride a bike!
I'll get to work on some more test pieces taking on board all your kind suggestions
All the Best, Barry