Raising grain problems...

[Phil Winn]

Built a Tiger Maple bedroom-set:
Sanded with 80, 120, 150, 180, 240 grit sandpaper & cleaned with a vac;
Soaked a clean cotton rag with distilled water, and wiped the pieces;
Let the pieces sit for 24+ hours until completely dry;
Sanded with "used" 240 grit paper;
I applied the Jeff Jewitt's Liquid dye diluted with distilled water;
Wow-what a disappointment, heavy grain was raised!
' using water with the Transtint dyes because I think it looks better;
What else can I try????
Thanks!
Phil
PS: No camera yet...sorry.

[Alan Turner]

Phil,

I am not sure why you had heavy grain raising, but if you have a piece of scrap left over, you could fiddle with that to try to discover the reason. I use bsically that same finishing schedule all the time without incident. I don't really "soak" the rag for the water wipe, just dampen it, and don't wait 24 hrs. for it to dry, an hour is plenty, but your procedure seems even more likely of success. Perhaps it is just the particular batch of wood that you have there. Or perhaps you have used more water in your dye mixture than do I. I don't really flood the dye on, but rather just wipe it on and none is ever left on the surface as a wet spot at all. Maybe that could be the issue.

As a work around, you might conisder putting on a coat of BLO with a gray scotchbrite and working it in, with the grain, in order to cut some of the nibs. But the problem with trying to sand it now, before any finish is on, is that you might end up with some pretty uneven color areas. I would tend to shy away from that, although I know that some of the guys here do do that in order to just emphasize the figured grain, without adding much color.

Good luck, and hope you get a camera soon.

[Chris Giles]

I would do two things differently from your initial grain raising. First, when you do your first grain raise, you need to use fresh, sharp sandpaper to cut off the raised grain. Used 240 grit will not accomplish this. I would go back to 150 and give it a good sanding, finishing out to 240. This step should be done before staining. Then after the analine dye is applied, sand it again, this time with fresh 240 or 300 grit. Press lightly with this step, and feel the tiny fibers shear off in the sandpaper as you go. This process works quite well for me when working with curly maple (which I happen to be doing this week). I find that two grain raisings are better than one.

[Maurice Ungaro]

Phil,
With the last batch of maple that I had, I dampened the wood and sanded w/ 220 for a total of three (3) cycles. Seems excessive, but the cutting boards I made with it can now be scrubbed and rinsed after use with no raised grain what-so-ever.

[Steve Schoene]

You can give the dyed maple a spit coat of 1 lb. shellac. This stiffens the raised grain so it can be sanded off (rubbed lightly with a grey pad) with little impact to the overall color.

[Rob Millard]

I built a curly maple chest on frame early this year, and I was surprised at the way the grain raised after wetting the wood. I of course had little or no raised grain on the planed surfaces, but any surface that was scraped or heavily sanded ( the moldings) showed serious raising. The only thing I did different than you was I sanded to 320 wetted and resanded with fresh 220 and 320 grit paper. I also did two cycles of grain raising, and after the dye was applied I felt carefully for any areas that I may have missed and sanded those again. Dye can be easily touched up. Even with the raised grain problem, that project turned me on to working in curly maple, as it looks unbelievable and is much easier to finish than mahogany, walnut and cherry.
Rob Millard