Surprise below the surface...any advice welcome

[Phil Mueller]

I’ve been working on a table made of cherry for our family room. Given the casual decor, I’m celebrating sap wood throughout. Some hate it, I happen to like it for this project. Anyway, the shelf is three pieces. A few days ago I cut to rough length, edge jointed, and did the glue up. Went pretty well.

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I went ahead and roughed out the front curve and set out to remove the glue lines and flatten. Lo and behold, this lovely bit of bug (beetle?) highway appeared just below the surface.

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Thankfully, I had a bit of thickness to work with, and set about planning down to see if I could remove most of this.

The LVBU jointer is performing well. I’m taking pretty light shavings with the thought that I don’t want to cause some tear out worse than what I’m trying to fix. I’ve been working across the grain and diagonally. The shavings are cool.

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I’ve got about another 1/16” I’m willing to go (really want to keep the thickness no less than 5/8”, but am starting to wonder if it’s going to be enough to remove most of the bug tracks).

Question; if you were left with a bit of tracks, how would you attempt to minimize them? I was planning to finish this in shellac...a first light application (somewhere around 1lb cut), and then a few coats of a heavier cut. Just try to match with whitish putty? Not sure how much cherry sap wood will darken, if any?

I’ve got some scrap, so I can try out a few ideas....
Thanks!

[John C Cox]

Just to make sure - is this kiln dried? All the bugs are dead and it's just the tracks?

If you want to highlight them...
Seal with shellac
Fill with black or brown epoxy.
sand back
Finish per usual.

I would not try to fill them with sawdust+glue or wood filler if you don't want ugly...

[Jim Becker]

Since you are "celebrating" the wood, filling with clear resin is likely what I would do...just as sap and heart coexist in the wild, so do "critters". The shellac will adhere to the resin just fine.

[Brian Holcombe]

Fill them if it bothers you, they will be throughout the sapwood.

[Phil Mueller]

Thank you Gentlmen. Jim, I’ve never worked with resin. Googling, I come up with a product Blick sells, also see something called Crystal Clear...some are called casting resins...are these the products to use?

[Jim Becker]

Resin... epoxy.

[Paul F Franklin]

It's been my experience that the sapwood of cherry will darken with time and light. I have an entertainment center that was built "celebrating" the sapwood much as you are doing, and while you can still identify the sapwood in it, 10 years on, the color is far more even than it was when "young". So I think Jim's suggestion is right on. If you fill the tracks with filler that matches the sapwood now, it will stand out, and not in a good way, when the surrounding wood darkens. Clear resin should allow the wood underneath to age along with the surrounding wood, so the filled areas won't stand out as much.

[andy bessette]

How about ripping it down the beetle track and re-gluing?

[Jim Becker]

How about ripping it down the beetle track and re-gluing?

That would visually affect the natural sap/heart look of the boards in the construction...it wouldn't be something I'd choose. I'd replace the board before I did that.

[Robert Cherry]

Is it too late to flip the piece over and make the bottom the top?

[Phil Mueller]

As Jim said, the boards were layed out as best as possible to keep sap/heart separated with a certain flow. Ripping out the problem would lose the look I was going for. And even if it wasn’t too late to flip the board, it didn’t have the same pattern on the other side that would have matched up well with the other two boards.

Sounds like the resin will be a good solution. Hope I can find a small quantity.
Thanks all!

[Jim Becker]

Phil, in all honesty, I just use simple 5 minute epoxy resin for filling small things like this. I'd leave it clear in this case, dribble it into the spaces and then sand it level. You can still do a final finish with your sharp hand plane if you prefer that to a sanded surface as the epoxy isn't "hard", as it were, and cuts nicely. For the recent kitchen island "continent" top I was commissioned, I had a small knot hole situation that I filled this way, although I added some brown dye to basically make the filler look like the remaining knot.

I'm generally a proponent of filling gaps with actual wood, carefully grain matched, et al, but in this case, that's not going to work. The resin will fill the gap and more or less leave the "feature" from nature.

[Phil Mueller]

Thanks again, Jim. Seems a simple run to the BORG will suffice. I actually have a knot that needs some attention as well...

[Jim Becker]

Yea, it's good to keep a little 5 minute epoxy around for "odd jobs", so the run to the 'Borg will not be wasted...although you might buy more than the glue. LOL

[Phil Mueller]

Paul, your point is well taken. It does darken over time. Rough sawn piece on the left is somewhere around 8 or so years since milling, the piece on the right is freshly planed. So I’ll be going with Jim’s recommendation.

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I also hate to not recognize everyone who took the time to reply.
John; to my knowledge it was air dried, but it’s a good 8 years old. I’m confident the critters are long gone.
Brian; I do like the somewhat casual/rustic look of sap/hardwood for this project, but the bug tracks (or anything short of a smooth surface, just bothers the heck out of me! One of those things that will likely get covered by books or ?, but you know down the road I’ll never stop thinking “should have taken the time to do something about that”

Hope I didn’t miss anyone...thanks again!