Sanding Mixed Colored Veneers

[David Perata]

I have a piece of wood that I have veneered and need to sand prior to finishing. It's mainly bird's eye maple with black (dyed) veneer accents.

I've heard that if you use a random orbital sander that the black dust will not affect the lighter bird's eye maple veneer. Is this correct?

I was going to sand it carefully up to the black line and then mask and sand the black, but if the random orbital trick works then I'm in.

Any other suggestions would be most welcomed!

Thanks!

[Mike Henderson]

It's hard to say exactly whether the dust will "stain" the bird's eye maple. I've had blood wood with maple and it was a mess. The blood wood dust significantly stained the maple.

If you have some scrap veneer, glue two pieces next to each other on some substrate and try sanding it. Better to know before you do the real piece.

I think I read an article by veneer person who suggested sanding the light wood first, then putting dewaxed shellac on it, then sanding the dark wood. That way, the dark dust won't get into the pores of the light wood. But that's a lot of work. Maybe someone else will have some suggestions.

Mike

[Steve Jenkins]

I think that Mike's suggestion to make up a couple pieces of scrap is a good one.
I have done some black inlays in maple and sanded them with no problem but the inlays were narrow (1/8")

[Mike Henderson]

The other place you might ask your question is the turner's forum. Many turners do bowls made from many pieces of different color wood (is that called "segmented turning"?). They usually sand on the lathe and would have real bleed over problems from the light and dark woods. Maybe they've developed some techniques for dealing with that.

Mike

[Brian Effinger]

Instead of sanding, what about going Neanderthal and using a card scraper? I haven't tried it myself, but it works in my mind. ;)