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I am wondering if everyone is doing "grain raising" with a damp cloth during the final sanding stages before sealing/pore filling?
Do you do it for spruce only, or hardwoods too? Several times?

Thanks!

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Build log

Most hard wood I find it is not needed mahogany can be an exception. On Cedar, redwood and Spruce I do a egg-white wash to both raise the grain or size them.

I was wondering if it might help the pore-filling process on resewood, actually.

As for spruce, when I did it with water, the surface turned rather rough so I sanded it smooth again with 400 grit. If you do the egg thing, wouldn't sanding remove most of the sizing?

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Build log

The egg whits infiltrate softwood fibers slightly and raise and stiffen them. What you sand off is the raised fibers. So that is the point of the sizing.

I don think it would help much on the rosewood issue as IRW pores are deep as well as wide. It might shrink the width some temporarily near the surface but when the wood dries and equalizes they will still be wide and deep

Alexandru;
The roughness you felt with the spruce was the raised grain.
Those whiskers stick up when wetted.
You only need to sand a little.
Not back to bare wood.
Or you'll have the same thing happen again.

Rosewoods do it also .



I use shellac for my first coat -no water at all.
Alcohol in the shellac has the same effect on the wood as water.
They're both Hydrocarbons I think .

Mike

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Mike Collins

X2 for shellac.

1 washcoat with shellac.
Sand back till smooth.... not to bare wood.
Seems to work well enough.

Thanks

John