John, Have used the English Beech before with no problem. I soaked the Beech in DNA for a week when I cut the blanks. They were cut in summer when temps were 35 degrees C. They were then stacked and set aside to dry for almost a year. The Walnut and Cocobolo were one pieces and were received in a private swap with a friend here in the States. They were pre-cut and the shavings from drilling seemed dry to me.
It was evening when I applied the CA and it was a wet evening, I can remember that. I sand to 400 grit with the grain and then use a small stippling brush to remove the bulk of dust, I then use DNA to wipe down the blanks.
I did pick up one thing, the ends on the tubes I normally seal with CA and on these there is none. Would the moisture from wet sanding, be the cause of my problems. The Walnut and Cocobolo, it may be the variation in temperatures. Thank you for your input John, it has been a long time since I was on this sight as a newbie and got slashed and burnt. It is nice to see it has changed.
Hello again Darren.
I will give you my thoughts really quickly because I have to go and won't be here again for awhile.
I am not sure anyone will be able to tell you exactly what went wrong and you will probably get ideas as to what others think. It could have been a combination of things and you may have to chalk it up to a learning experience. I do realize how frustrating it could be to spend all that time to finish a pen and get those results. Been there done that.
The introduction of denatured alchol is tricky when dealing with finishes because in essence you are adding water to the mix and if the blank is not completly dry again and each spiecies drys at different rates, when adding a solid hard finish such as CA and then hitting with an accelorator to speed that drying process can trap moisture underneath. Now when it does dry and movement of the wood itself happens you can have cracks develop. I never use DNA to clean a blank. May I suggest using the accelorator to do this or compressed air.
You mentioned the ends were not sealed and you wet sanded. I will say this I do this all the time and have no problems at all. First when wet sanding you are lubricating the sanding pad which makes it glide easier and thus does not create such big sanding marks. Remember when sanding out a finish you should only be doing a polishing sanding and not a forming sanding where you are removing lots of material. If you are doing that then you need to readjust your application methods. As far as the ends not getting sealed is not true. The ends will get some CA from the application to the main body of the blank. If water can get between the bushing and the blank when wet sanding it will not absorb into the ends because the CA has blocked it. You probably always have to do some trick to get the bushings off the blank unless you use special bushings. Now if you use those cone shaped bushings for your CA application then you always need to add some CA to the ends even if you do not wet sand.
The last thing I always question is the use of accleorator. To me this adds to many variables such as trapping moisture when doing you finishing in a high humidity condition. The use of accelorator hardens the top layer of the CA but the content underneath is still curing and now moisture has no chance of escaping. I prefer to let the CA dry naturally and if I want to speed things up I let the lathe spin at a slow rate till dry. I only use thin CA because I feel I can control it better and not have moisture trapped.
Like I said these are some of my thoughts and others may chime in and hopefully you get things figured out but not sure you will ever find the right answers. You can just try to prevent the obvious and hope for the best. As I said some woods are just destined to crack and good luck.
PS don't know anything about your last encounter with the forum. I am sure there were 2 sides to every story.
[facepalm] Maybe that explains some of my aggravation with the stuff!