Beall buff - tripoli filling the grain

[Brad Simmons]

For my first run at turning bowls I turned a couple from spalted hackberry. I put several coats of Watco Danish Oil on them and several days later went to Beall Buffing them. Anywhere there is the slightest bit of tear out, or open grain, they pick up the red color from the tripoli coming off of the first buffing wheel. I buffed at around 1300rpm and tried not to apply too much pressure. I kept the bowl moving, but both ended up with the same issue. Any help?

[Roger Chandler]

How much tripoli did you put on the wheel? Especially for lighter woods like hackberry, a little goes a long way............just some thoughts.....

[Michelle Rich]

tripoli and white diamond will fill open pores.& tearoout. You must do a better job of sanding, and if the wood is very porous, you can't use these.

[Brad Simmons]

I don't know how much is too much. The cloth isn't completely covered.

[Brad Simmons]

I'll definitely be more careful with the sanding. What happens if I just skip right to the carnuba wax? Is that allowed?

[Thom Sturgill]

I just recently turned a spalted Hackberry bowl. Beautiful spalting but punky. Probably too late now, but sanding sealer is your friend. Penetrates enough to firm up the surface for sanding and fills pores. Follow with a film type finish like lacquer, which can be buffed (gently) after a week or two.

White diamond will cut the wax in the tripoli to help clean it out. Follow with a clean wheel to remove more. Also try wiping it out with mineral spirits.

[robert baccus]

Roger that what Thom says. Stick compounds were really developed for metal polishing and to use on wood the pores must be leveled.

[Harry Robinette]

Also only use WD on light woods and use Trp on dark woods that seams to help allot. A tooth brush works fairly
well cleaning out the cracks.

[Thomas Canfield]

I follow a finishing procedure that I got from Elmer Adams after visiting Big Island HI and everyone talking about his finish. He advised buffing with Tripoli before applying finish to both improve surface finish (sand to 400 prior) and that the Tripoli did tend to fill the small open pores. It will add some red tint to light woods, but even ash, pecan, and oaks respond well to a little red tint added to surface/grain. The wax does not change the wipe on/off poly/oil finish, and he advocated buffing between each coats (4 or 5) and after final before going on to the white diamond (if desired) and final waxing. It is a trick sometimes to get a balance of the added tint if heavy application of the Tripoli is used.

[Marvin Hasenak]

If you buff before you apply your finish you are basically waxing the item and preventing the application of a good finish. The sticks are made using waxes and or tallow to hold the actual compounds together. The final finish will wear off the wax/tallow pretty fast, might be okay for a shelf sitter, but an item that will be handled and used will soon lose it's finish, then the wax/tallow and be back to bare wood.

[Brad Simmons]

My other bowls from this wood are much lighter than this one I've had these problems with. They already have the Watco Danish Oil on them. I foresee them being "shelf sitters" as Marvin put it. Would just using the carnuba wax on them be okay, or is their a better option?

[Grant Wilkinson]

In addition to the advice you received so far, I would add that, at least in my climate, "several days" would not be enough to harden the oil to the point where it could be buffed successfully. When I've been impatient, I've found that what I really did was to buff off the oil. Then, the buffing compound fills in the grain that was underneath it.

[Marvin Hasenak]

My other bowls from this wood are much lighter than this one I've had these problems with. They already have the Watco Danish Oil on them. I foresee them being "shelf sitters" as Marvin put it. Would just using the carnuba wax on them be okay, or is their a better option?

I finish everything, and I mean everything like it will be drug through the house. When using an oil finish I like to wet sand creating a slurry to fill the pores of the wood. There is a gunstock maker, Frank Whiton that wrote up his process for gunstocks, Google "Frank Whiton gunstock finish" a long drawn out process, but for me a finish is part of the over all wood turning process. My method is a short version of the Whiton process. Anther good source of info on finishes for woodturners is Russ Fairfield's secrets of finishes. His write up covers them all, a lot of good info. Easier to read these two articles than try to reinvent the "wheel" of finishes.