koa wood pen finish and a back handed gloat

[jared herbert]

I just drilled and glued some curly koa wood blanks. My question is what should be a good finish for that wood, I have never used any koa before. On the other pens I have made I have alway used a couple of coats of shellac/wax mix, polished it and then put on some hut wax over the top. I have only a small amount of koa and dont want to screw it up. I actually just picked it up personally on Maui a week ago. My wife and i were there and we stopped in a small gallery where a fellow was making all sorts of high end free form sculptures, mostly from koa and these were small scraps left from that. Anyway one thing led to another and I am going to mail a couple of pens to him, he was interested in selling them in his gallery. We saw some really nice wood items, custom made stuff. An especially nice stop was a gallery in Hana, actually the only gallery in Hana. It is adjacent to a high dollar hotel. The lady that runs it is really personable. She has some really good furniture, several norfolk island pine vessels, etc. and a lot of paintings, prints, etc She also has 3 NIP bowls made by Ron Kent locked in a display case, they were for sale. She saw me admiring them and took them out so I could handle them. I guess they dont move too fast as the same bowls were there a year ago. If I remember right they were priced in the neighborhood of $3000 each. Anyway what should I use on the koa pens? Thanks in advance Jared

[David E Keller]

Any kind of oil will pop the grain… I generally use boiled linseed oil that I friction burn into the wood followed by a typical CA finish. Congrats on the koa… It's lovely stuff!

[Kyle Iwamoto]

Koa is just like any other wood. Use what you normally use to finish it. I don't think anything will screw it up.

The only help I can give is curly koa is very "chippy". You can take out (relatively) large chips and pocks when coming down to the final dimensions of the pen. I normally sneak up on the final pen dimensions with my 80 grit gouge.

[Jim Burr]

Another thought, Koa is kinda oily sometimes, like cocobolo. Maybe just buff to a good shine and let it patina over time. Just my .29 worth

[steven carter]

Any kind of oil will pop the grain… I generally use boiled linseed oil that I friction burn into the wood followed by a typical CA finish. Congrats on the koa… It's lovely stuff!

I have had good luck doing this as well, the curl really pops!