I am about to start finishing my long term oak dining table project. After much mucking about I have found a colour that pleases the family – a 2:1 mix of ‘golden teak’ and “jarrah’ using a Feast Watson tint then coated with an amder shellac. The process I used on the test pieces was pretty much the same a Jeff Jewitts article in FWW186.
My question is – do I fill the grain before the shellac? Feast watson have a sanding sealer apparently designed for use under shellac, but this has always been a bit soft when I have used it before – I have had trouble sanding it back but the problem might have been the ambient temperature – theeir tech advice tells me that all chemical reactions stop at 10*C. This will not be a problem with a Canberra January!
The timber has a very open grain on the quater sawn top so it will either be a filler, more coats of shellac than I care to count, or rethink and use poly.
Dave
Replies
There is no reason to use a sanding sealer under shellac, especially if it doesn't sand extremely well--that's the entire point of using sanding sealer.
If you want a fully filled finish without the pores showing, then you do need to use a filler, perhaps even two coats given the openness of oak grain. This has to be fully integrated with the staining. Since oak isn't usually "blotchy"--and your color (oops colour) testing should have told you that, you can stain directly on the wood. You will also have to colour the pore filler. Depending on the effect you want, it can be either darker than the base colour, or lighter. If the difference between the filler and the base is large you will probably want to seal the stained wood lightly before the filler. I generally use shellac, with perhaps a 1 lb. cut. That will lessen the staining effect of the filler on the surface, leaving it mostly in the pores. Then after the filler has well cured, you can apply top coats. You can use shellac entirely, or you can first establish the colour with the amber shellac, and then finish off with a couple of coats of varnish. If the varnish has to be poly, rather than a traditional resin varnish, then the shellac should be dewaxed shellac.
When you add the filler, you have to extend the testing a bit more to work out how it is tinted and how heavy the shellac sealer needs to be to have the proper effect when the pore filler is added.
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