High-Contrast Grain Finishing Question

[Bruce Ferm]

I need to put a finish on some canarywood and some Bolivian rosewood. Both of them have dramatic light vs. dark color contrast in the grain of the wood. The canarywood is actually multi-color, with different color dark stripes on a yellow/gold background. I need to keep both of these woods as natural-looking as possible and I don’t want to darken either of them up hardly at all, if possible.

I have only a limited amount of each--and they’re both pretty expensive--so I can’t do much experimenting to see how things work out.

I’m thinking (?) about going with the “natural” (untinted, transparent) Watco Danish Oil or else maybe a satin finish varnish.

Any experiences or advice about finishing any high color-contrast grained hardwoods would be appreciated. Thanks for your help.

[Steve Schoene]

Old based finishes will all darken these woods to a degree. You will get less darkening with a very light colored shellac such as super blonde or ultra blonde. Shellac is good about bonding well to exotic oily woods. If you use dewaxed shellac then other finishes would adhere to that. You could use a waterborne finish as an alternate way to avoid darkening the woods. Waterborne might have adhesion problems by itself, in which case you would want to start with the dewaxed shellac and apply the waterborne over it.

[Sam Murdoch]

Old based finishes will all darken these woods to a degree. You will get less darkening with a very light colored shellac such as super blonde or ultra blonde. Shellac is good about bonding well to exotic oily woods. If you use dewaxed shellac then other finishes would adhere to that. You could use a waterborne finish as an alternate way to avoid darkening the woods. Waterborne might have adhesion problems by itself, in which case you would want to start with the dewaxed shellac and apply the waterborne over it.

Good advice. Watco will most definitely add color. I like the shellac option recommended by Steve. Otherwise (and I don't really care for this but it fits the bill) use a "water white" urethane. There might be some spray options that would be better but I don't have experience with any to suggest with certainty.

[Bill Neely]

Even super blonde shellac has more color than most of the waterborne finishes - for brushing, GF Polyacrylic is colorless, lots of choices for spraying.