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I have sanded this maple strip to 320 and I still get staining when I wipe it with naphtha. How can I make sure that the maple doesn't stain when I finish it? I plan to use zpoxy then EM6000... Any thoughts or suggestions? Thanks, Steve

BTW - I do like the wood river no. 4 plane, but this wasn't an intentional indoresment. It just happen to be in the picture...

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Steve Sollod (pronounced sorta like "Solid")
www.swiftcreekguitars.com

Steve,
That appears to be in the wood. I can see it in the first picture, wetting with naphtha just accentuates the "stain". If it's mineral streaking, it could be too deep to sand out without a major reshape of the heel. If it's a burn from a previous machine operation, you should be able to remove it with 120 grit sandpaper.

Steve

That just looks like the end grain taking in more solvent, and highlighting the curl in the grain, Steve.

Alex

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"Indecision is the key to flexibility" .... Bumper sticker

Well, I don't know. The rest of the maple strip is clean as a whistle. It seems to be in the end grain and really only noticable when naphtha is applied. I experienced this once before on another build and after applying finish the stain appeared. It looks more like poor workmanship rather than simply the character of the wood, especially since the rest looks clean. If it was thoughout it wouldn't bug me so much. I was hoping someone was going to tell me, "oh yea, that's no problem. Here's how you fix that". Has anyone else seen this in end grain before? Should I just ignore it and say, "oh, that's simply the character of the wood..."(?)

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Steve Sollod (pronounced sorta like "Solid")
www.swiftcreekguitars.com

Do you have the offcuts of the neck blank? Maybe sand the offcuts to see if it happens there as well. It could also be mahogany dust embedded in the end grain. Possibly blow it out with a compressor?

Okay, my wife says I am being silly and anal. If you agree, please say so and I'll forget about it... I tend to be very detail oriented, to a fault (and not always a good thing). The wife says That I should strive for excellence and not perfection. Anway, here is my previous build that did the same thing.

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Steve Sollod (pronounced sorta like "Solid")
www.swiftcreekguitars.com

My guess is the sanding and naphtha wipe transported some color from the darker woods to the maple where it was obsorbed into the end grain.

I would carefully sand again trying not to cross the colors, blow it well and wipe with a micro cloth (not naptha), not crossing the colors.

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Joe Beaver
Maker of Sawdust

That would bug me too since the rest of the maple strip is clear.

Ed's suggestion seems like a good one. Maybe see if you can reproduce it on a scrap of the neck. Try sanding the scrap maple end grain to 320 and then see what it looks like with naptha. If you don't see similar darker spots, try sanding it more with some sanding dust from the mahogany or the darker wood (rosewood?) that's on both sides of the center strip to see if that results in darker spots like the ones on the neck. That might give some direction of how to fix it on the neck. Such as further sanding of just the maple center strip.

Are the two dark strips rosewood or some other wood with oil in it? If so, maybe the dark color is from oil carried over into the end grain by sanding.

If that doesn't do it, or someone doesn't suggest a way to do something like bleaching the offending dark spots, would you consider darkening the center strip by staining it? Maybe not, since it looks like you might want it to match the binding color.

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Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right - Robert Hunter

Yea, indian rosewood flanks the maple. I'm going to try to only sand the maple to make sure I don't get any rosewood dust into the maple. We'll see how that goes...

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Steve Sollod (pronounced sorta like "Solid")
www.swiftcreekguitars.com

Let's us know how it turned out

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Joe Beaver
Maker of Sawdust

You may want to consider scraping instead of sanding.

Turn a fine hook on a good scraper and carefully go over the maple, paying attention to the changes in the grain. Try to avoid the EIR to each side, but the shavings you will be making if you do hit it will be less likely to get in the pores of the maple.

Practice on scrap first.

More than likely it is the end grain picking up extra naptha, as end grain does. James Condino talks about this in his burst article in the Spring issue of American Lutherie. Brush a little clear shellac on the end grain maple in the heal and see if it still stains.

Bob

I second the scraping. I would try it very lightly and see if it changed anything if not, it's the wood then and one wouldn't be able to change it.

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久保
美智え

Looks like the figure (some flame in the maple) to me. It's wood.
You're being silly and ....you're wife is right. There is no perfection.

Egg whites kept coming to mind, and after searching the web a bit I found this:

"Post by: Habu on June 17, 2012, 08:46:12 PM
Egg white is a component in some "ground" recipes used in finishing stringed instruments, and it is sometimes used to fill the grain on guitars etc. It also get some use in marquetry, because it will keep colors in adjacent inlays from bleeding. You might read up on "vernis bianca"--a luthier's ground. I've never tried it on a rifle.

If you are going to use it as a sealer, you might try the approach Cennini recommended for "varnishing" carvings (Cennini was a 15th century Italian, but his book was reprinted by Dover as The Craftsman's Handbook). Whip the egg whites into a hard foam, then let them sit over night. The next day, apply the "distillate" (the watery liquid in the bottom of your bowl) to the carving with a soft brush and let dry.

I've experimented with this a bit on practice carvings, haven't actually tried it on a rifle (and wouldn't without further experimentation). I'd say definitely stain the rifle first, after all--the egg white is being used as a sealer.

Good luck!"

A commercial wood sealer might work as well, but if it is the "curl" in the wood that is causing the problem (absorbing too much sealer) then the egg white might work better.

In the past, I've had blotches appear on the end grain of my mahogany necks during the finishing process. The solution was very good sealing. I used to do only a couple of seal coats. Now on the end grain areas, I do six. No more blotches.

Pat

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There are three kinds of people:

Those that make things happen,
those that watch things happen,
and those that wondered what happened.

Maple is prone to this. It may look like you have sanded it completely, but further sanding should remove the tendency for blotchiness. Also, you might try sanding in one direction only to prevent roughing up the wood fibers. You could also try a finer grit of paper. 400 grit is not too fine for end-grain maple.

Looks like both to me... figure soaking up naptha, but also with some rosewood dust stuck in it. First get the dust out, then seal it. Fine dust can get into endgrain pretty deep, so just keep at it, sanding in directions that don't rub more rosewood dust across it.

Scraping is the best way to avoid fine dust, but I usually don't have much luck with it on endgrain. Though it may be an option to scrape the dust out, seal with shellac, and then sand it.

Sealing with shellac can either darken or not, depending on how deep you let it soak in. If you rub a nearly dry cloth on it a few times before going to a wetter cloth, it will seal without penetrating and remain light. If you rub the bare endgrain with a soaked cloth so there's plenty of shellac on the surface to keep it wet for a few seconds, then it will darken a lot. If you're doing the scrape-seal-sand plan, then you'll want it to penetrate at least a little bit, or else you'll just sand it off the surface and expose pores for the rosewood dust to get into again.

Oh, and if you have any trouble with maple dust getting in the rosewood, just brush some alcohol on it and it will extract color from the rosewood to dye the dust dark. But it may also bleed into the neighboring woods, so use a fine brush.

Rosewood (solid or dust) plus solvent = an effective strong stain. You cannot get the rosewood to stop releasing these oils no matter how long you soak it. Once the stain soaks into a light wood..... well you just try to do better next time.

End grain does soak up finish and will result in darkened blotchy spots like this. I would seal the maple strip with dewaxed shellac before the finish. That is if zpoxy is comparable over dewaxed shellac. I don't know since I never used it.

Sent from my HTC Desire 626s using Tapatalk

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Another day, another dollar.

You can put shellac over zpoxy, but not zpoxy over shellac. That's why I didn't want to seal the maple with shellac (since I planned to pore filled the mahogany neck with zpoxy). I tried using a scraper and clean the maple pretty well, but when applying the zpoxy the same staining appeared. Frankly, I got tired of stressing over it and I am proceeding with finishing... Maybe next time I'll give egg whites a try. ...worth a shot.

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Steve Sollod (pronounced sorta like "Solid")
www.swiftcreekguitars.com