Senility is catching up!!

[George Symula]

Let's see if I can make this a short story! I had a board of spectacular crotch cherry, air dried and a minimum of 65 years old. Dimensions were 20" x 71" x, 3/4" thick but milled very poorly. I've been saving it for 15 years until the "right" project came along. Last week I decided on a single drawer hall table with a top 17" x 42" (single board), cherry legs (new stock) tapered 4 sides to 1", with quilted maple aprons. With all of the waste in this old board I could not get any aprons or legs but I did get a beautiful drawer front, 14 3/4 x 3 7/8. All prep work was hand planed and scraped, cracks and rot filled with sawdust and epoxy. Beautiful, if you like wood in it's natural state, which I do.....Now the problem.....

My recipe was intended to be, blo to pop the grain, blonde shellac with antique maple TT toner followed by USl for the aprons. blo, garnet shellac followed by cherry woodkote gel stain as a light glaze to tie all of the cherry pieces together, another 1 lb cut of garnet or blonde, then USL topcoat. However.....after the blo and the necessary drying time, I forgot the garnet shellac on the cherry and went right to the gel stain "glaze".

As a result, I can no longer control the depth and clarity of the "glaze" because it's in the wood. I can bring out the planes and scrapers and start over but I thought I'd try this august group for suggestions before I did any thing so drastic. Also, any more work on the top will probably destroy the patina that's developed over the years.

By the way, this is intended to be a gift for a family friend who I'm sure has no appreciation for the single board, although she should appreciate the sweep of the burls. Thanks for any suggestions....

George

[Sam Yerardi]

George,

Others may have some better suggestions but the first thought that comes to mind is to bleach the wood back to a neutral color and then start over, BUT:

I had a similar problem on a piece I was working on so I went to my trusty Bob Flexner book 'Understanding Finishing' and a couple of his articles as well some other authors, and unfortunately Flexner's answer wasn't what I wanted to hear. He said it is a question that he gets asked constantly. The question was what can you do if you've already created a blotching situation? His answer was nothing. The only way to recover is sanding or scraping down past the depth that the stain has been absorbed to. You may be able to have some success with bleaching, though. I just think it won't be able to get all of the stain out IMHO.

[George Symula]

Sam,
Thanks for the response, unfortunately I think I knew the answer before I posted the question. Planing, scraping and sanding are out. I stopped on a couple of defects because I was exposing more and more crossgrain in the burl with the resultant change in texture and color. So....I sprayed super blonde shellac this morning to seal. I'll sand and try light toning and maybe shading with usl tomorrow and see what I come up with. Dumb...
Thanks...Geo

[Sam Yerardi]

I call it fun instead of dumb. I do it all the time