Posted by Bill Epstein [ 65.189.210.168 ] on September 11, 2005 at 16:44:47:
For any of the cheap seats woods like Pacific Alder or rotary cut fir plywood or Baltic Birch or, "are you listening Colin?" finger jointed pine: the answer. Decide if you want Walnut or Mahogany or Cherry or whatever. Get some Dye Stain and dye the bare wood after 220 garnet sanding.
Now re-sand the wood with 220 Garnet paper and don't use a sanding block; you want to get high and low spots, taking off more color here, less there.
Now pad on Orange for Mahogany or Walnut; Garnet for lighter woods Shellac. Use a 2lb cut. Put an inch of flakes in a 1 pint glass jar and fill with denatured alcohol. For Orange you can buy a pint can of 3LB called 'amber' shellac at the paint store. Add some alky to it.
Take a golf ball size piece of cotton or wool sock and let it soak up the shellac, squeeze out the excess and put it inside a Handi-wipe towel. Quickly wipe the towel along the workpiece starting in from one edge and finishing across the other edge then reversing to get them both. Work quickly and overlap the strokes.
If the pad begins to drag add more shellac to the cotton/wool. If it drags and thickens your shellac is too thick, add more alcohol. You want a very light coat to go on. Sheallac dries so fast that when you get to the end of the board or the other side of the box you can immediately re-coat. 5 or 6 very thin coats is what you want.
The Orange or Garnet will darken the wood where the stain was sanded off but still leave contrasting area. You should now have a really antique look which has 'worn' spots and lot's of highlights.
Now for the piece de resistance wipe on some Boiled Linseed Oil thinned 25% with Mineral Spirits. Be generous but don;t slop it on, the shellac won't let it sink into the wood. Wait an hour and wipe off all the excess.
After 24 hours you can admire your work.
I just finished some Pacific Alder bases for the Welborne DRD's this way and they look like antique Cherry museum pieces. Sorry, no more Website - no more pictures.
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