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I am doing my second and thrid set of scales and I put an inlay in one of them. I can see a little bit of spacing around the inlay because my cuts aren't perfect, but close. Is there some kind of grain filler I can use to fill the area in before final sanding and oil finishing? I was wondering the on my first set of scales too. This set is in Bloodwood.
You can mix very fine sanding dust (from the wood you used) with normal PVA glue (white wood glue). Mix it with a scraper till you get a very fine, even-colored paste. It's a fairly invisible filler.
Best regards,
Bart.
cool...can it stll take a tung oil finish after doing that?
Yes you can. However, with some woods, the slight color variation between the filler and the real wood may become more apparent, while with others, oil finishes tend to even out things.
I don't know what will happen to bloodwood. Best to try on a piece of scrap first and see if you can live with the results. In this case I would not choose a penetrating oil, but go for a polymerized Tung oil finish, which is more a film-forming finish.
If you choose to stain before finishing (highly unlikely with bloodwood:)), that always gives problems with this kind of wood filling. For that purpose they sell a wide variety of different colored sticks , made from a sort of hard wax, to be matched with the final results after staining, or even completely after finishing. That's another option you have, but it's more expensive and the results aren't always as good as with the dust+glue filler.
Bart.
While researching oil finishing, I came across this link. I haven't tried it yet, but it seems like a good idea for grain filling/oil finishing. I'm currently working on a set of Padauk scales with some pretty open grain, so I've been considering this as an option.