I went back to work on the bed I'm making for Carol and me and after the long lay off I had to bring the parts back into true. Deciding on the finish has taken quite some time. Finishing not being a strong point of mine, I decided to dive into Bob Flexner's book "Understanding Wood Finishing" and rectify that situation, at least partially. Some of the quarter sawn ash, I had been air drying for 2 years, had some spalting and needed to be covered by the stain and or dye. So began the experimentation.
It took a total of 22 recipes before we were able to find one that we could agree on and that covered the spalting. I will make a post later on recipes. I will say this, the good folks at General Finishes are a great source of information and an absolute joy to work with. When I called I expected to get "For this department press....", instead a real live human answered, and she was able to answer all my questions and offered some really great suggestions.
I used the badly spalted ash, pictured below, for my test pieces. I figured if this could be covered the very minor spalting on the bed components would cover with no problem.
A picture is worth a thousand words, they say.
I promise my next post will be sooner than a month and it will include "Leather"!
~ Ray Schwanenberger
Looks good, Ray. That'll be a nice bed. Welcome back.
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