Problem with Finishing Hackberry

[Tom Keen]

Ive been trying to work with Hackberry off and on for a couple of months. The pieces I have are bright white with dark grey hearts. The problem is that when I sand it, the grey dust gets into the pores of the white wood and make a mess of the white. Is there some way to avoid/fix this? Using an oil based darkens the entire piece. Laquer is better, seems to seal the wood, .. Ive been sanding to 400.. Its extremely frustrating.. Im about to use the hackberry in the wood stove, but it seems like it could be so nice.

This vase was turned green and is about 12" tall. The other picture illustrates the problem..

Thanks!

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[Steve Schlumpf]

Tom - I haven't a clue what you can do differently - but wanted to let you know that the vase looks great!

[robert hainstock]

If you have one of those brush tips for your shop vac, you might try vaccing it out of the pores. Otherwise I have no clue either. :):eek:
Bob

[Tom Hamilton]

Tom, could you seal off the dark spots and then sand the rest of the piece. Perhaps use CA on the dark and build it up some so that the sanding process levels the built up dark to the lighter portions.

Maybe even use a Dremel to excavate the dark spots some, build it up with CA and then sand the whole thing. The "theory" being that you would never expose the sunken dark spots during the sanding as you would be sanding CA on the dark areas.

Best regards, Tom,

[Bob Hallowell]

Malcom says he uses a card scraper for this reason. I have yet to try it cause lifes been to busy lately but it's worth a shot.

Bob

[Bernie Weishapl]

Great looking vase Tom. I would use a card scraper. Had something similar to your problem and that seemed to be the cure. As Bob said the tip came from Malcom.

[George Troy]

Couple of suggestions do not sand with wet & dry use the 3M white, might help. You could try some water based lacquer, it will raise grain, then light sand.

I also use enertia sanding material discs from Steve, the discs are a very lite gold color. www.turningwood.com

[Tom Keen]

Whats a "Card Scraper". I like the CA idea

Thanks,
Tom

[Glenn Hodges]

Try blowing it out with air gun, spraying with sanding sealer, hand sanding with 3m steel wool, use air gun again, then using lacquer. You might put on 2 or 3 coats of sanding sealer before starting to spray with lacquer.

[Bruce Shiverdecker]

General Finish makes a product that I believe is called Furniture Cleaner. I used it once for a similar problem and it worked well.

Bruce