Thanks for the info on finishing method. I like to use BLO/CA on most of my wood blanks so I'll try that straight away. I sometimes use Meguiars PlastX on acrylics... Never tried it on wood. My daughter is the one who thought up the Redwood trip to N. Cal. Was going to make a couple of pens from Rocky's blanks for her 21st birthday this month. They have some really nice figuring so I hope to get something as nice as yours. Thanks again for sharing.
Jeff
QUOTE=stuckinohio;1823301]
Very nice!!! Would you share your finishing method by chance? just bought 6 redwood burl blanks from rockb who's from the Redding CA area.
Redwood seems to be a theme for our family this past year. We took a car camping trip in March to the Northern California and Coastal Redwood parks. Some really big trees!! Our Christmas picture this year was the kids in front of "Tall Tree" (see pic)
I will surely share, but i messed up a few times on this particular pen. You might not want to follow it! I spent hours on this pen.
BTW, I can't stop buying wood from Rocky! I've been resisting buying redwood from him since I have my own, but he has nice stuff for sure. I technically did buy a spindle of it from him for a shaving brush in case I want to make one.
Anyway, the wood was pretty dry so I turned it down close to the bushings and soaked it with CA to stabilize it.
Next I turned it down to a little under the proper measurements and coated it with CA, not using accelerator since i have been having trouble with CA finishes cracking lately.
Sanded the blank with 400 to smooth out, but I must have had a high spot or been out of round because i had two light colored areas, almost pale, after this.
applied CA again in three of four coats of thin since I was still shy of measurement and thought the light spots might go away after coated, but they didn't unfortunately.
Sanded off the CA again and decided to use BLO/CA finish, hoping the BLO would restore the color to pale areas.
It did, so I continued with BLO/CA applications to build back up then sanded and MicroMeshed as normal, followed by a buffing compound I had from working on cars, then a car glaze which I like.
Turned out great and I wouldn't be ashamed at showing it to discerning experts from this site, but I sure made several mistakes![/QUOTE]