Can someone help me with finishing a segmented bowl without smearing the colors?

[Joshua Dinerstein]

I turned a bowl that is a 3 piece segmented turning. I had a 2" thick Padauk blank and bought some 1" thick maple pieces. I wanted to turn some thing with a bit of color for the holidays.

All went well. The stuff turned beautifully for the most part. Got the shape I wanted. Left the wall thickness a little thicker, and thank goodness for that!

So the problem: When I was finishing the piece using oil and wax. I like this finish because of the ease and it works really for the candy dishes I normally turn. Anyway the red of the Padauk "smeared" over onto the white of the maple as I was trying to finish it. I am not sure how it actually happened. Everything looked good right up to that point. Might have been "saw dust", might have been something else. I have seen so many segmented things posted here that included light and dark woods that didn't do this. So I figure there must be some kind of trick that prevents or strongly reduces what is going on for me.

Attached are some pictures that hopefully show what happened. You know in thinking about it the lighter wood might be Poplar rather than Maple.

Any advice would be great! Thanks!

Joshua

[Curt Fuller]

Your problem is made even worse by the Padauk wood. It has so much natural pigment that it gets leeched out by the solvents in the oil and wax and then absorbed into the light colored maple. About the only thing I could suggest for a combination of woods like that would be a spray on sanding sealer followed by a spray on finish. But it's too late for that now, maybe on the next one.

[Malcolm Tibbetts]

Joshua, your first mistake was to use padauk. For the very problems that you have experienced, along with the stuff just being so messy, I don't allow the stuff in my shop. To salvage your turning, I suggest that you re-mount on the lathe and "turn off" the stain. Work at achieving the best surface possible with your turning tools and before any sanding, apply several very light coats of "rattle can" finish (something like Deft). With your bowl still mounted scrap off the finish and repeat until the wood pores have been filled. To scrape off the finish, you can use a shear-scrape technique or try using a handheld cabinet card scraper. The theory is, if you can get the pores of the light colored wood filled, then there's less chance for the dark wood extractives to find a place to lodge themselves. Coarse grit sanding will quickly destroy your sealing job, so a fine tool finish is required. I can usually start sanding with 220, with maybe a tiny bit of "spot sanding" at 180, but you should try to avoid anything below 180-grit. Good luck.

edit: I see Curt was posting as I was typing.

[John Devost]

Yeah that's top notch answers from both Malcolm and Curt....now the thing I do is avoid any light colored woods with Padauk with my puzzlemaking. Padauk has what seems an almost stain quality in it that leeches into anything near it but if you use darker woods such as Bocote or Wenge for instance it's almost unnoticeable. I use it a lot because of its bright, vibrant color, I tried using it with Holly one time but you don't want to hear about that.....:D

[Jeff Nicol]

Joshua,

Where the staining is most noticeable is where the end grain of the maple is not sheared cleanly. This just about always happens with maple. So when any finish is applied the end grain shows darker. It would help the end result to do as already mentioned, a sealer sprayed on as not to wipe into the paduak. If you were careful and used some thinned down shellac going from the maple to the paduak so you don't transfer the staining to the maple. Let dry real good then go back and take a very light shear scrape or a 1/4" bowl gouge and take a very fine cut you could get the end grain cut cleanly. It will still take some sanding but the end grain will be stiffer and not tear out.

Good luck!

Jeff

[Montgomery Scott]

Your first mistake was using slabs rather than making rings. Using a ring will create face grain all around so that you won't have the excessive absorption of color that you have with end grain. Face grain maple does not absorb the paduak stain easily.

I use padauk rather than bloodwood as I like the color a little better and it's about 1/3 the price, though bloodwood is quite colorfast as opposed to paduak.

I did this piece and used lacquer. To eliminate color contamination I take a cloth with lacquer and hand apply the finish very lightly in a circular motion to seal the wood and pick up the color from the piece. It works well for me in any case.

http://a984.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images01/126/l_0fba3642f527a4d4adfcb01baa56ca0f.jpg