made a table top – 43 x 32 – white ash – planed on a 12 1/2″ planer, glued up the 3 sections ( each about 11′) sanded with a random orbit, hand sanded, applied a wash of white paint & wiped to highlight the grain, applied spackle to the entire top as a filler & further highlight the grain, hand scraped with the grain then applied 6 coats of finish( 1/3 each turpentine, spar varnish & tung oil) Beautiful finish however when the light shines at a certain angle, there appears to be ripples in the finish, howver it’s perfectly smooth. Any comments?
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Replies
Do the ripples coincide with the growth rings in the Ash?
No they didn't Kevin.
You mention the planer. Does it look like a machine-made ripple?
Pete
That's a possibility Pete. Possibly one knive (of the three) was a mil higher than the other two - not enough to feel the effect/ripple but visible after finishing.
Optical effect, often caused by stress on the tree as it was growing. I notice the effect on many species of wood, and spent alot of time trying to understand what would create it.
Imagine the tree unevenly pruned, so that it had more growth on one side than on the other. Not unusual for trees in cities where they might be pruned crudely for power lines. When leafed out the lopsided weight of the canopy would pull the tree toward the heavy side, compressing the trunk on that side. Leaves fall off, and the tree is less stressed. The trunk gets to relax a bit and the tree straightens up. Cycle repeats each season. Subtle ripples in the density of the wood as if the grain was buckling a bit inder the lopsided weight.
Just a theory. Best I've come up with.
stay away from the glue fumes, 4D --- hey, good thinking!! --- but let's wait for more comments before we blame the tree!!
I have had the same thing, and oddly enough with ash. It was curry enough not to show till it had an oil finish wiped on.
Work Safe, Count to 10 when your done for the day !!
Bruce S.
same with mine, Bruce. Nothing showed up until I had a few coats of finish on it. I'm still with the theory/cause that it was a knife blade on the planer that was a mil higher than other two.
"I'm still with the theory/cause that it was a knife blade on the planer that was a mil higher than other two."I doubt that the planer is causing what you see:
1. Specs for 2-blade planers show 60+ cuts per inch; 3 blades at 10,000 rpm would probably make 90 cuts per inch, making any ripples caused by a high blade to be about 1/45" apart.
2. 1 mil gouges in the surface would be easy to feel.
3. All that sanding and scraping you did would have taken down the high spots in any event. I think what you are seeing is, as other posters have suggested, natural variations in growth of the grain. You only see them after finishing because fine surface scratches from the sandpaper, which scatter light, have been filled by the oil, enabling you to see the wood more clearly.
BruceT
It may be , "chatoyance". Does the effect vary with viewing angle? If so it is a feature of the wood figure reflecting the light slightly differently. Chatoyance is a good thing as natural woods do it, and most synthetics don't.
Or it could be a residual from the planer. They don't, (can't) cut a perfectly smooth surface. (There is a Hitachi made years ago that can, but it is a fixed blade machine, that power feeds the wood past the blade, and takes very thin cuts per pass. Think of a really big hand plane with a power feed) All of them produce a "wavy" surface, as the cutters are mounted on a spinning cylinder, and the wood is fed at a constant rate. The surface is a series of little intersecting arcs.
How wavy is a function of the cutter head radius and the feed rate. The larger the diameter, and slower the feed rate the closer to flat it gets. With the same cutter head, if you halve the feed rate, and double the cuts per inch, the little arcs are less deep. My Delta 22-580 at 60 cuts/inch is leaving 0.000034-inch deep valleys, and at 90 cuts/inch is leaving 0.000015-inch deep valleys. Not enough to see or feel, until you put a finish on it, and they act like little lenses.
Edited 4/11/2007 5:20 pm ET by Jigs-n-fixtures
This is a very educational community. Not only does one receive good advise on woodworking but I just increased my vocabulary with "chatoyant". Thanks Jigs for your comment. I tried that word on my wife who is a cryptic crossword enthusiast and she was stumped !!!!!!!!
If the ripples run totally across the board and are evenly spaced apart, I would suspect your planer. Planers--and jointers--cut in a rotary motion and the knives sort of scoop out the material they remove. With rotary cutting there is no way around this and it is perfectly normal.
All wood run through jointers and planers need to be either flattened with a scraper or with sanding. With either, work until you have all evidence of the scalloping removed. Wipe the surface down with mineral spirits and inspect the surface from the side. The mineral spirits will highlight and defects in the machining, sanding, glue blobs and will preview the color of the wood when clear coated.
thanks for the "mineral spirits" tip Howard. I am starting on a larger dining (extension) table using ash again and I'll certainly give it the "mineral spirits" check.
Willy- my initial response is that if you could post a picture of this there would be less speculation/guessing.
Machine plane ripple and other machine marks are easily sorted and I would assume from your description of sanding and scraping done that these have been removed anyway-or at least I would hope so.
As has been mentioned chatoyancy is a nice feature of some woods, but it is not a regular pattern and seems natural ie not some artificial man-made effect. Iroko can have it- it needs some redeeming features anyway.I have tried to capture it on these two items- an Iroko licquor cabinet (the lid) and the jewellery box made from Imbuia.
Another guess on my part could be the effect of late wood early wood growth and this may have been high lighted by your finish preparations- eg the turpentine may have penetrated at varying rates.
So there is some more speculation- try to give us a picture....
I'm rather confused. You started out working toward a filled finish with the paint followed by spackle to fill pores. Typically such a finish is followed by a film finish--shellac, lacquer, or varnish.
But then you applied an oil/varnish finish (a bit like Watco) which is designed to penetrate and have any excess wiped off and not allowed to build up a film on the surface. Since the spackle is absorbent I suspect it soaked up oil/varnish differentially along the lines that Phillip mentioned. That doesn't really sound what you discribed, so I am not very confident that the answer lies entirely there.
You didn't mention wiping off excess of each coat of finish. Oil/varnish mixes, especially with a soft varnish such as spar varnish, are not meant to be left on the surface to build a film, since the film would be very soft, with a tendency toward gumminess. I'm a bit surprised you didn't report that kind of problem. Was the "tung oil" a tung oil "finish" such as Formby's or was it labeled pure tung oil or 100% tung oil? You also didn't mention sanding between coats. Without the sanding, you might have found each subsequent coat accentuating a small ripple rather than obscuring it.
In any event, I'm rather puzzled about what happened. How about mentioning the specific brands, and indicating how you applied the finish, and whether you did any between coat sanding. Sometimes things such as the temperature of your finishing space is useful information. I doubt you could get this problem to show very clearly in a picture, but I'd reinforce Phillip's suggestion that one might help anyway.
Hopefully "Frenchy" and "Philip" will also read this post. I don't have the software or digital camera do post a picture but am following up on that request. I'll do a further description. The table top is 43 x 30 and the ripples run across the grain. The top is made up from 9 pieces of ash glued together -- 3 a 4" pieces glued then planed to finished thickness and then the 3 approx 11-12" sections put together in a final gluing. Then sanded with an orbital, hand sanded to remove any circular marks, "stained" with white paint then wiped after 10-15 minutes; thus highlighting the grain. Two days later I applied the spackle to fill the open grain of the ash, scraped all excess, hand sanded and let dry for about 3 days then began the application of my "triple mix" 1/3 Moore's spar Varnish, 1/3 Lee Valley Polymerized Tung Oil and 1/3 turpentine.I applied my "mix" by hand and after 10-15 minutes thoroughly wiped all excess, waited for a day and applied the next coat. I did not sand between coats. In total, applied 7 - 8 coats and let coats 4 - 7 dry for two days before the next application. I did this in my heated basement - probably 68 F. The ripples run cross grain but not the full width of the table. They are predominant in each of the 3 sections I glued together thus my conclusion that it is the result of my 12 1/2" planer. Again, they do not repeat at consistency in the 43" length. Some ripples may be 1" apart and others 6 or 8 inches. The centre section of the table has the most predominant and open grain but has the least ripples, possibly only 3 or 4 in the 43" length whereas the two other sections have more ripples but not repeating with any consistency. My only other thought is I may have had inconsistent pressure when hand scraping
What schedule of sanding grits did you use? Unless you started out with something fairly coarse; e.g., 100 grit, you may not have removed the planer scallops.
I surprises me sometimes how much I see these scallops on finished pieces. Guys say that "my planer leave a glass-smooth surface", but you can't feel these by hand. They are most prominant after a finish is applied, viewing the surface at the right angle, with the right lighting.
you may not have removed the planer scallops........
I've caught myself making the same mistake, hoping I could skip right to more finish grits. It's always a bad move. I'm sure it varies with machinery and techniques of planing/joining, but I generally kick myself if I don't go back to 80 or 100 first.
I think some guys look at straight and flat and mistake that for smooth. They are two different things, as well we know, huh?
You mention white paint and "spackle". Were these water based? It's possible you raised the grain or raised compressed areas in the wood. Curious what you mean by spackle, assuming it's not the drywall variety.Pete
willy,
fiddleback varies but yes it goes across the grain and it may be in a small segment of the wood or all the way across the board for whole lengths..
Take a really staight edge and shine a light under it, if that doesn't reviel any dips or waves congradulations you have highly desireable fiddleback.. be proud.. Explain to everyone about expensive violins and how expensive it is.
The currant Grizzly catalog sells the lowest grade of maple fiddleback for $60.00 and the highest grade for $210.00
that's a piece 7 1/2 inches wide, 2 inches thick and 20 inches long.. Of coarse now if it's quilted you can get up to $350 for that size piece.
willy,
I suspect fiddleback.. You can get fiddleback in just about any type of wood.. If it's baby butt smooth but looks ripply you have fiddleback Ash.. (sometimes called curley Ash)..
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