I am planning the assembly of a piece of kit furniture. The kit is a chest of drawers in tiger maple. I plan to use a water based dye to bring out the tiger figure in the wood.
Tests indicate that I will have to wet and sand the components 4-5 times before dying to reduce grain raising by the water based dye. My intention is to build the chest in sub-assemblies e.g. legs and base, chest carcass, top assembly and drawers. I would like to pre-sand and dye the individual pieces of each assembly prior to actual glue-up.
Does anyone know if the dye application prior to assembly will inhibit the glue process? Is this a reasonable plan or am I out there on Pluto with this idea? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Best Regards
TJ Holcomb
Replies
TJ,
Glue squeezout/removal will be an issue for wood dyed before assembly.
My sanding schedule is to dry sand at 100, 150, 180 grit, wet, then sand with 220. Any grain raised by the dye can be knocked down with 0000 steel wool. The finer you sand before wet-sanding, the less grain raising will be a problem. I haven't found any benefit to wetting before sanding other than the finest grit--I've tried wetting before each grit, and didn't see a benefit.
It's perhaps more important with maple than other woods, to sand carefully with the grain, avoiding- at least on the final passes with each grit- partial strokes (go end-to-end) and "J-strokes" at the end of the stroke.
Of course, it is always a good idea to try your sanding/finishing schedule on scrap (offcuts from the project) to make sure you get the results you want.
Ray
What kind of top coat do you have in mind?
Grain raising needs only be done once, after the final grit of dry sanding has been achieved. Then after the wet down surface has dried you only want to sand very lightly with the same final grit. Sand too much and you get into other areas of grain to raise. And, the dye will still raise some grain, so you will still have to very gently sand that off--the best time to do that being after the first coat of the top coat has been applied. This works particularly well with a coat of shellac.
Dye won't inhibit most glues do any significant extent, but I'm not sure what advantage there is, and can sure think of some disadvantages. Even with careful dry fitting, it is not at all uncommon for the glued up piece to have shifted alignment slightly or to find that even a padded clamp has burnished a surface. If you have pre-dyed, a bit of sanding or a touch with a smooth plane to flush mating surfaces can't be done.
By the way, you can check for glue up problems with some naptha before you dye to be sure you don't have glue "artifacts" when you apply dye.
This forum post is now archived. Commenting has been disabled