I’ve built a Sofa Table of Ash and am about to do the final sanding before the glue up. I am going to stain it dark. Something along the the lines of Walnut or Mahogany to go with my MIL funrniture.
I have a single knot on one of the shirts (the one I’d like to use for the front side because the grain works better that way) and would like to do something to the knot before I stain so it won’t stand out so much.
I’ve seen this situation addressed before in one WW mag or another but dammed if I can find it in my files. I’ve tried research here but no joy (I’ve been reading too many British Mysteries). Can anyone point me toward an info source or give me a quick tutorial?
Thanks in advance for any help.
P.S. I saved a fair amount of Ash saw dust from the mortices. Could that be mixed with glue to fill the hole after excavating the Knot with say a Forstner bit?
Replies
Is the knot very large? Is it loose or tight?
If it's a tight knot, I'd leave it and fill the open crack with epoxy colored to the approximate color of the rest of the knot and leave it, instead of trying to make it disappear. That knot is part of the beauty of the wood that you used.
If you don't want it to absorb too much stain, try very carefully putting a coat of shellac ( 1# mix) on just the knot. then lightly sand and stain. You can also use this method on end-grain.
Anything is possible, I suppose, if you want to really make a knot disappear, but you're really doing this the very hard way. If you didn't want a knot in the finished piece, it would have been far easier to have not used a piece of wood with a knot in it than to try to hide it after the fact.
First, experiment with a piece of scrap with a similar knot in it. Try the stain you planned to use and see just how obvious the knot is. A dark stain will probably make the knot a lot less obvious, and you won't have to do anything at all. Going to an even darker stain may solve the problem. In the unlikely case that the knot is lighter than the stained area around it, you can use a brown or red felt tip marker to blend the knot in.
You can cut out the knot and install a patch that would be hard to spot if you are careful to match the grain, especially if the patch extended well beyond the knot to eliminate the distinctive graining that normally surrounds a knot. If you use a wood filler or a patch that doesn't blend in well, you can use oil paints applied with fine brushes. to recreate the grain of the surrounding wood. Done by a pro, this kind of patch can be nearly invisible even if you are looking for it.
Ash sawdust mixed with glue will look like a piece of cardboard and won't absorb the stain at all, it wouldn't be any better than using a commercial wood filler.
A last, and absolutely foolproof, alternative would be to apply a veneer of ash to the entire face of the board.
John W.
Edited 9/5/2003 5:42:00 PM ET by JohnW
Dick and John W
Thanks for the feedback
Edited 9/6/2003 8:32:27 AM ET by MikeE
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