NGLJ
Member
I made some blanks from torrefied eastern maple which planes very nicely. I made the pen (attached) to see how it turns and finishes. The pen ended up much slimmer than I intended which was part of the learning. Because of the cooking I expected it to be very hard and "leaned in" a little too much! Once you have made an oops there is no choice but to try and fix it. Hence the slim pen. So I learned that I need to take smaller bites with this material. Since it plains nicely as you might expect it also sands nicely providing a good base for a finish. In this case I used 2 coats of diluted shellac (2 parts ready made shellac to 1 part methyl alcohol) as a sanding sealer, sanding with 400 between coats. Then I used CA for a top coat. It came up very nicely.
. I was told that it is eastern maple.