Ambrosia Maple - Finishing Tips

[Edward Bartimmo]

As much as I enjoy the finished product...finishing Ambrosia Maple is a lot of extra work. Any suggestions or tricks to coping with the wood's tendency to bruise / show pressure marks from the tool or dealing with the inevitable cracking / minor fiber tears on the end grains while turning? Despite using sharp tools, shear cuts, scrapers, and a light touch I always find myself going to 80 or 100 grit sandpaper to get the marks out for the desired finish that I want. I spend more time trying to correct these issues then I do sanding any other grit or item.

Lat night I was worknig on a piece that had a lot of fuz and soft end grain...I finally just flooded the area with some diluted lacquer to penetrate the fibers. I am hopoing that this with give some support without the discoloring the wood like CA would cause.

Any suggestions or tips would be great.

Thanks,
Edward

[Alec Moseley]

I have had some good results with ambrosia maple by rough turning, then soaking the bowl in a mixture of BLO and mineral spirits for a couple of days. After draining the bowl tends to finish turn more cleanly, and sanding after the oil soak helps smooth the surface.

[David Hullum]

you could also use oil when you sand

[Edward Bartimmo]

Alec,

Part of what I like is the color contrast between the ambrosia color and the pale maple color. How much does the BLO darken the colors?


I have had some good results with ambrosia maple by rough turning, then soaking the bowl in a mixture of BLO and mineral spirits for a couple of days. After draining the bowl tends to finish turn more cleanly, and sanding after the oil soak helps smooth the surface.

[Ryan Baker]

Any of the oil finishes will darken the wood and give it a more brown/amber color, no doubt, though there is usually still pretty good contrast with the ambrosia coloring. If you want to retain the coloring, lacquer is a good choice. Using some of the intended finish (the thinned lacquer in your case) is a good way to help get a clean cut on really stubborn end grain. (I never really had any trouble with ambrosia, but yours may be more punky.)

[Bernie Weishapl]

I am like Ryan and have really never had any trouble turning ambrosia maple. If I want to leave the color of the wood as natural as possible I would use lacquer to finish with. I would also use it thinned to sand with but again I have never had to do that. I have spritz'd it with water once or twice the give a final cut with a sharpened/honed conventional gouge.

[Nathan Hawkes]

Edward, I've had similar issues with soft (red) maple before. You were spot on with tool pressure being a part of the problem. I've found that grinding the heel of the tool back, so that the bevel is only about 1/8" wide works very well. Even if the grain is cut perfectly, if you're riding the bevel, you're putting pressure on the wood as you cut. I do a lot of shear scraping with an irish grind gouge, or a 1" half round scraper turned up at 45deg. cutting wispy finish cuts to get rid of torn or fuzzy areas. A traditional grind bowl gouge works well for interior cuts. Just make sure you sharpen it just before using it. I have probably only 1/16" bevel on my traditional grind gouge.
The lighter woods can be just as problematic, but less so. Recently I finished a bowl that I had put aside a year ago or more after finish turning, only to find that I couldn't sand away the bruising marks. Even though it was very hard "black rock maple", a sugar maple subspecies, it bruised quite prominently, and if you look hard enough, you can see the line where it soaked up just a wee bit more finish there than the rest of the bowl. I'm guessing that this is because the bevel pushed out a little bit more water from the cells when it was turned green, leaving a lot of space for the finish to soak in. I have no idea whether that's close to right or not, but it makes sense in my head. Red maple is definitely worse, but you can't always see it in any wood until you apply oil, and it soaks in. Check out Johannes Michelsen and his gouge grind--almost no bevel whatsoever.

[Alec Moseley]

You're right about color alteration - you have to accept that with the method I mentioned. If it's important to avoid, I'd use lacquer as others have suggested. It lacks the pore-filling advantage of sanding an oiled surface though.