I have built a round table, which folds up into a half moon. I used mahogany but when I went to use it, it had cupped, so I had to rip it into narrower boards. I then glued then bask to gather using biscuits. When I cut the half moon I noticed I cut through one of the biscuits.
Now my question is how can I touch it up to match the mahogany finish, the rest of the table I stained with a mixture of 3 parts polyurethane 1 part boiled linseed oil one part naphtha.
Jack
Replies
At this point you are going to have to practise a little artistry to cover up the biscuit. First, you have to make sure the surface is fully filled--no dimple where the biscuit didn't fill the entire slot. Then with the surrounding mahogany as a guide, you can apply a pigmented toner--I would use shellac into which I had mixed dry fresco powders. The color you would be looking for is the lightest shade of the mahogany. Then I would use a very fine brush and the shellac mixed with a darker pigment to add in the darker grain. You may be lucky and find the biscuit is surrounded with mostly end grain, which will be more uniformly dark. Then I would apply a couple of coats of a wipe on varnish, since the film I used to bind the pigment would create a film on the surface. This would stand out against a "in-the-wood" oil varnish finish where all excess has been wiped from the surface.
You might have been able to use a dye to establish the color for the biscuit, but after it has been sealed with the oil/varnish finish, dye isn't likely to take very well.
Jack,
The foolproof way to fix that error is to chisel out the offending biscuit part, and glue in a piece of mahogany in its place, with the grain oriented to match however it runs in the surrounding wood. It should take no more than 15 minutes to do this and then you can forget about it forever after.
David Ring
http://www.touchwood.co.il/?id=1&lang=e
Yes, of course--much easier than the cover up method I mentioned.
As ring stated take out the piece.
However, just use your biscuit cutter to remove the biscuit then put another piece of mahogany back in.
F.
Floss I can't do that because the biscuit is in between the 2 boards and I cut the biscuit in 2 going cross ways if you know what I mean.
Jack
My advice is, also, to replace with mahogany. But I have to ask... how could you have only cut through one biscuit?
I do not think the remove biscuit with biscuit jointer idea will work. I bet he is looking at the biscuit in the wrong direction for this. The jointer cuts wide and shallow and I bet he cut the table the other direction so he is seeing narrow and deep. This is why he only cut one of them. The cut he made was at 90 degrees to the direction he glued up the boards and thus just happened to hit a spot with a biscuit. If the cut parallelled the clued up boards it would have hit many biscuits.
Doug M
sapwood Good question ! I only installed 3 biscuits in each board and I tried to place them so I wouldn't have the problem that I am having now, but something went wrong.
Jack
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