I discovered by bizarre twist of fate what causes the "ripples" in the CA. I was working on a very gnarly burl blank...got it turned, sanded, then applied my CA finish. If anyone has listened to my version of a CA finish, you'll know what I mean by "toothpaste"...but I toothpaste my blank, hold my wax paper to it and give it a couple spins with the hand wheel.
Well, it went as usual so I turned away to go fiddle with something else while it dried. Came back a few minutes later to check it by lightly touching it. All good, hard as a rock! So I crank up the lathe and grab my sand paper. I no more than touched the bottom of the blank with the paper and it stuck fast and whipped out of my hand wrapping itself around the blank.
What the hell?!?!?! It was rock solid when I checked it! How could it still be wet? So I stop the lathe and proceed to unrolling my sand paper from the blank only to notice it was stuck not to the whole blank, but the darker areas of the wood grain (curly maple) only. So I get all the CA off (wet and dry) and decide I'm going to experiment a little. I took the blank off the lathe and went inside to drop it in some boiling water. My suspicion was that the dark areas had a higher level of oil. Water and oil do not mix, so boiling water would heat up any oil inside the wood and force it to escape. I was correct!!! After less than a minute, I watched little balls of oil form on the outside of the blank....only on the dark areas!
Moral of the story...use some denatured alcohol or mineral spirits or something to dry up some of the left over oil before you apply your CA.
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