I’ll soon be making a couple of small tables for my church. Obviously, I plan to match the style and finish of the pews and furniture already there.
The pews and other furniture are made from white oak, with what I call a “true golden oak” finish. I’ve heard sketchy descriptions of how the piece is sanded with fine sandpaper while applying the first coat of finish. Thus the darker open areas of the grain get filled with the lighter-colored sanding slurry. As a result, the flat grain ends up being the darker color by about a half-shade, and the original darkness of the open grain is gone.
When cured, that slurry coat must (I’m guessing) be block sanded so that the slurry is not covering any of the flat grain, but gets left in the open grain??????
I know that there is a tremendous amount of knowledge here….. Anyone have significantly more details as to how this type of finish was accomplished 70 or 80 years ago?
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The pores in oak, even white oak, are large enough that the slurry method of filling pores isn't all that effective. It much rather use a commercial pore filler that can be tinted to the exact shade you want, and allows you to stain the oak to the golden oak. You can't really use the slurry method with stained or dyed wood--you would be creating the slurry by sanding off the stain. I would dye the wood with the basic golden oak color--just a shade lighter than the ones you are trying to match. Then I would apply a light sealing coat of shellac and apply the pore filler, tinted to be just a hair darker than the dyed surface. This will add depth without overly emphasizing the grain. After the pore filler has cured, you can apply a top coat.
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