Finishing Room
And show off your figured wood.
Highlight figured wood with this easy two-step technique.
I don’t know about you, but I have an affinity for nice pieces of wood. Some might call it a problem — if I see a beautiful piece of figured wood, such as curly or quilted maple, you can bet that it’s coming home with me. But, all that figure does nothing if you can’t show it off on a finished project. So here, I’ll show you how I make the figure pop.
Good Prep
I know that you’ve heard it before. The key to a good finish is good surface preparation. And that’s even more important with figured wood. When possible, it’s best to prepare the surface for finish with a hand plane. To understand why, you first have to know how wood fibers work.
At a microscopic level, wood consists of a series of tubes. Think of them like drinking straws. In a normal piece of wood, the end grain is the ends of the straws. In a figured piece of wood, such as the curly maple shown in Photo 1, the wood fibers are undulating. The ends of the straws, instead of being at the end of the board, poke through the surface in waves. This face grain to end grain shift causes the curly appearance. When you sand the surface, even to an extremely high grit, you’re mashing the fibers and making them fuzzy. At a certain point (a high grit), you’ll make them fuzzy and burnished enough that they don’t actually want to soak up any finish.
By slicing through the fibers, with a plane or card scraper, you’re leaving the ends of the tubes open and ready to accept finish. If you’ve never experienced this, try it on a test board. A clean, nice cut from a hand plane will give the board a much flashier appearance than sanding. This is called chatoyancy.
Put the Stain Down
Now, I almost always prefer a clear, oil finish on my projects. If you fall into the group who like to stain their projects however, I beg you to not stain your figured wood. Instead, reach for a dye.
Dyes, such as the alcohol-based trans-tint dye shown in Photo 2, have pigmentation that is dissolved in a solvent. In contrast, a stain is a pigment that is carried in a binder. The binder “glues” the pigment to the surface. By this nature, stain sits on top of the surface and obscures a portion of the grain and can make it appear muddy. That’s no bueno when you’re trying to highlight the figure.
Even though I prefer clear oil finishes, I almost always highlight figured grain with a dye. I do this by mixing dye into a base of shellac. For maple, I found that the dark antique maple dye is a nice subtle contrast. A key here is “less is more” to some extent. I’ll usually add about 5 to 6 drops of dye to a small Dixie-cup size serving of shellac. You can always go darker if you’d like, but it’s much harder (nigh, impossible) to back peddle and remove color. As a side note, if you’re doing an additional color on top of the first application, black dye yields good results. For example, coloring a piece with emerald green dye would get a base of black.
Sand it Back
After applying a coat of the dye-tinted shellac, you’ll want to let it dry thoroughly. It shouldn’t feel tacky, cool, or wet. Once you’re convinced it’s fully dry, you will want to sand back the finish. What you’re looking for here is to remove the shellac and dye off the surface of the workpiece. You can see this in Photo 4. But why would you do this?
As I mentioned before, the figure you see on this is end grain. Those open ends of the wood fibers will soak the shellac and dye deeper than the surface of the stock. So, after sanding the top coat, you’re still left with areas (the end grain/figure) that is holding onto some of that color. Now’s the point where you’ll want to decide if you want another coat of dye to darken the figure more. Refer back to my “less is more” comment earlier. It’s rare that I’ve decided to go back and hit a workpiece with a darker mix. If anything, I’ll add an additional coat of the tinted shellac after sanding to help saturate the end grain fibers.
Beautiful Top Coat
Now is where you can put your normal finishing hat back on. Once the figure has soaked up some of the tinted shellac, you can top coat it. Personally, in my shop, I lean towards Danish oil (in natural flavor). If it’s something I want a little more protection on, I’ll apply a wipe-on polyurethane.
As you can see in Photo 6 below, the effect that this technique gives is pretty subtle. But, I think it’s a finish that looks natural, and doesn’t look like it’s going to compete with the design of whatever piece I’m finishing.
It’s also important to note that this technique doesn’t only apply to a clear finish, such as I’ve shown here. You can use this dye layering technique to create some spectacularly colored pieces. Layering colors on a bowl or platter rims is a common technique of turners. When working with colors, always work from the darkest color to the lightest, sanding in between.
One of the most exciting things about woodworking, at least to me, is seeing the various species of woods that grow around us. And because each tree is unique and different, you’ll never know what you’ll find when cutting into one, or digging through a lumber stack. So, the next time you have a special piece of wood stashed away, reach for some shellac and dye, and make that grain pop.