Thread: Messing With New Finishes

I decided to try out some new finishes. CA and tung oil. Not pure tung oil, but minwax tung oil finish. I went with yellowheart for the CA. The CA was starting to make me really mad since I kept flipping the scales over and getting dirt and dust in the glue till I adjusted my little holders and I won't have fingerprints on the tips of my fingers for awhile after picking them up. The CA really showed just how the grain in this wood shimmers in the light though so was worth it. The left scale is just started sanding with 400 grit and the right is finished. After I got to 600 grit I knew it was going to shine cause it was already shimmering. After 1000 grit I "cut" the finish and it still looked somewhat dull from what I was expecting, but then I remembered reading in GSSIXGUN's http://straightrazorpalace.com/works...ints-tips.html (great thread by the way) to use wax afterwards. All I had was some lemon oil & beeswax, but it really made it shine. Hard to capture just what the grain looks like in this wood with a camera, but I really like it. I like the CA on the yellowheart, but I think I would go with something else with alot of other woods. I guess high gloss just isn't my thing for most stuff. The ebony I decided to try tung oil, which I think was the wrong wood since it was so dark and tightly grained it didn't really bring the grain out. I had to keep buffing it with the grain instead of across it so it would pull some of the oil from the pores otherwise it was starting to look like plastic and that isn't what I wanted. I didn't want to bring it to a high gloss cause I liked it with a dull finish. Great learning experience for what certain finishes can do to different woods. Still got some more experimenting with different woods to really get an idea though.