Another question on stabilized wood

[CDH]

This is a piece of box elder burl from WSSI. I am wondering if the 'cloudiness' or 'haziness' to the finish is normal. I did have some trouble with it scorching as I hogged it down, but I has at least 1/16" of clean sanding, but I would expect that distressed area to have been very shallow. Anyway, look at the pictures. The figure of the wood is really crisp in areas and in others it looks like a white haze or crazed surface obscures much of the detail.

It was hogged down with the aforementioned scorching problems. The finish shaping was with a fresh 80 grit Norton AO belt on a 1x30, finish shaped (using a very light hand and slack belt) with a 220 grit AO belt and hand smoothed with 220-320-600 grit strips. Last it was lightly buffed with paste car wax...no abrasive. There is no noticeable difference in surface texture by feel, (I noticed this early in the rough shaping stage) so there was a lot of effort on my part to sand out these areas...without improvement. It is deep, not a surface defect.

Is this normal? I was quite disappointed in the lack of detail in some areas.

No it is not a trick of the flash...some areas have really good color and detail, some don't.

 

[Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith]

Those ghost areas are usually the result of overheating the wood in grinding, and especially if using a buffer. It melts/vaporizes some of the acrylic resins ,and when they cool they have a whitish color. Careful grinding with sharp belts can help prevent this.Once they develop, some really careful polishing, using almost no pressure may get them to lighten.I like final white and no-scratch pink polish for this. Sometimes cleaning the handle really well with acetone and then carefully re-buffing will improve things.
Another thing that cause similar looking areas is getting polish stuck in the grain of the wood.The re-clean and re-buff thing applies here ,too.
Stacy

 

[CDH]

Thanks Stacy. That is what I was afraid of, but I had never read anything about heat sensitivity of stabilized wood. This one hasn't seen a buffer, so I suspect is was the belts. THe 36 grit belt I was hogging with seemed to load up really fast. I'm learning...too bad this was/is my Father's Day gift for my Dad. :foot: I have a couple of days before I see him so I'll see what I can do.