Sealing pine

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ThomJ

Member
Joined
May 14, 2010
Messages
807
Location
Fairlee, VT
I am in the process of making a series of pens from state trees. Any suggestions on sealing pine? I'm turning some 90 year old white pine, and am getting sap leakage.
 
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Hard to stop mother nature----hopefully the leak stops before it turns into a international event.
Or did I read that on CNN?????????????????????
 
I doubt it ... They can't stop the one in the gulf so .


If you don't mind darkening and a yellowing of the wood I would use Shellac . If you want to keep it light then use CA .
 
I make several pens every year from Pine, and this is how I do it.

I dip the pen into Acetone after turning and sanding.
Give it overnight to dry, and then seal the wood with thin CA glue.
The wood is now sealed, but needs to be sanded again.
Apply the CA finish.

You can do the same thing with shellac, but the CA glue is much harder as a sealer.

The wood oils cannot migrate back to the surface and break the bond of the finish to the wood, but they will remove the gloss in a few months. Oil in the wood will remove the gloss from a finish. There is nothing you can do to prevent that.

One of our club members claims sucess at removing all of the oil from the wood by soaking the sanded pen barrels in the Acetone for a couple days. I haven't tried this yet.
 
I had a pine knot that was full of sap, the first thing I did was to cut it into blanks then microwave it 6 or 7 times 1 minute each, let it cool between zaps. After turning I sealed it with 3 coats of Milands sanding sealer, waited a couple of days, smoothed it up with 0000 steelwool then finished it with CA. It came out great, that was six months ago and it still is good.

 
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I had a pine knot that was full of sap, the first thing I did was to cut it into blanks then microwave it 6 or 7 times 1 minute each, let it cool between zaps. After turning I sealed it with 3 coats of Milands sanding sealer, waited a couple of days, smoothed it up with 0000 steelwool then finished it with CA. It came out great, that was six months ago and it still is good.
That's very interesting. That's a note I'll need to keep. Thx.
 
A super blonde shellac works wonders for pine. Thin CA didn't work. I did a batch of pens for a campout for gifts. The only thing that worked was shellac. Super blonde has a minimal affect on the color. Do 1# cut and it'll soak right in and seal.
 
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