Thread: finish for a kalimba

The Orange shellac will change the colour,you can mix with bleached or blonde shellac or the UB hard. If you want to minimize it and get a nice thin polish job with the orange shellac

Sand the wood to 400 grit

Prep the timber with a wipe over with water, this will make the grain rise a little, dry with a heat gun,

I think drying it quickly is important to stop the moisture soaking deeper and possibly swelling things

lightly sand the wood which will now have the grain slightly standing with a worn or old 400 grit ,you can lightly rub 2 new bit's of 400 together,

then wipe over with a glue size, I use Hide glue, or whte PVA or Tite Bond, the ratio would be roughly 15 or 20% glue to warm water

wipe this on then heat gun dry ,then lightly cut back again with the 400 grit paper,

now you can apply polish and wax when finished,

I did this method yesterday to my pine guitar top, this is the third time I have polished it,the other two polish jobs were to protect while I finished the woodwork,each time I changed the polish mix,First was a lot of blonde and a little orange, next was 50 /50
I think ,I thought it still looked to pale, yesterday was almost a straight orange mix,

I know it wont look as yellow as this picture in day light because the two incandesant globes in the lights I use make things a lot more yellow in pictures

cheers Rob

Same top,no lights, previous polish job which was the 50/ 50 mix over the size mix,
Just the fluoro lights, not the incandesants

Very interesting. My timber has all been smoothed very finely by handplaning. 400 grit paper would make the wood rougher than the current glossy surface. Is the sanding/grain raising still necessary?

What is the purpose of the glue size? I'm new to instrument making and I haven't heard of this before.

Anyway I'll order some blonde/bleached shellac, sounds like a useful thing to have on hand.

Leon.

By the way, what's the object that looks like a bent chisel blade in your photo?

I'm new to instrument making too but getting old in the furniture and restoration side,

Glue size is a way of sealing the timber, and gives it a barrier to coloured soloutions being absorbed to deep .

I mainly use it as a tool for staining ,and when using straight orange shellac, If you have ever glued up a table and left glue dry arround the joints and then gone to stain you will see what a pain it can be,

If you make a soloution of size like I said before and do two stronger mixes and get a board of radiata pine , do the water prep and dry ,cut back ,then wipe the size on in three seperate places ,cut back, then give a wipe over with straight wattyl cedar stain ,you see what a tool size is for adjusting colour

If you are going to size , it is a water based step on the raw wood , and like any water based step on raw, like bleaching or water based stains, it has to be wet to raise the grain ,and then be fine sanded, other wise in that cedar stain example if you went on and started to polish ,when you cut back after a coat or two you would cut off the tops of the raised grain , and ruin your colour , it goes all spotty

Another good thing about size is it makes for a really quick polish job, that guitar top took 30 minutes,and I will have to do it two more times,probably at fifteen minutes, also after you size and cut back you will have a new understanding of the word smooth, nothing feels as smooth as a cut back size job on a fine grained timber [Pine]

I use it for the smoothest running drawers possible, do the wet prep, size and cut back, then a rub with paraffin wax,

And that object is a chisel ,a cheap chinese one, that I bent arround a pipe in a vice using an oxy torch and a hammer,it allowed me to prise off the bridge patch that I had glued in the wrong spot, after warming the patch I could reach in and slide it along the under side of the top with my fingers,,like I said I'm new at intruments, bridge patch done twice ,fret board done twice, frets done twice the only way to learn
cheers Rob