Problems finishing spalted tamarind

S

Spucknit

Joined
Feb 5, 2015
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I've been working on my first kitchen knife and have a few issues. First off I should mention that I bought spalted tamarind from wood craft, and it was supposed to be stabilized. I think that they may have sent me a non-stabilized piece. I have never worked with stabilized wood or spalted wood before, so at first I didn't question it. Now I see there is an area just above the forward most pin where the black epoxy has pushed through. Shouldn't stabilized wood be free of holes like that? I would expect those to full of the stabilizing agent. And I was planning on finishing it with danish oil. If it's not actually stabilized, should I use Minwax wood hardener or something like that in order to make a bit stronger?

Second, I'm also having an issue around the pins. As I am hand sanding with progressively finer grits, I've noticed that the pin material is not being removed as fast as the wood, so they are starting to become bumps in the handle. I can't really see them yet, but can defiantly feel them. How can I prevent this?

Third, What is that grey towards the butt? At first I thought it was sanding dust front the brass, but then I sanded being careful not to go over the pin, and it wont go away. Is it normal to see this in tamarind? It sure seems weird to me.


Any advise will be most appreciated.
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Even with stabilization, depending on how it was done and who did it, you could still get voids in the wood. You aren't supposed to, but it can happen. Woodcraft sells both stabilized and non-stabilized pieces so they very well could have sent you a non-stabilized piece... if it was stabilized it should have had a somewhat "glossy" look to it when you received it. If you can easily scrape it with your finger nail, it is probably not stabilized. When you tap it and scrape with your nail it should feel like plastic if it was stabilized.

Also, that gray bit is pretty normal in spalted tamarind from what I've seen. I have no clue what it is, but every piece I've seen has that gray bit somewhere in the wood.

I'm not sure if anything can truly replace good stabilization after than handle scales are on. Other makers will have to chime in since I usually work with stabilized wood or woods that don't need it... Luckily, woodcraft is good about drying their wood, or so I've heard, and spalted tamarind can be quite hard, 2318 on the Janka scale right under osage orange. But, as you've seen it is full of voids. Your best bet might be a CA glue finish??

Several makers have their way of getting the pins nice an flush. I've had good luck backing my sandpaper with a small piece of steel bar stock, i.e. 0.5-1" wide with the edges radius-ed to back my sandpaper when working on the pins. The hard backing will help*, not prevent, but help keep the sandpaper from pushing into the wood harder than it pushes into the pin. I try to focus on the pins more than I do the wood when sanding in those areas to prevent that "dome" from forming. If you are just sanding with your hands, your skin will deform around the pin and push harder into the wood. Just my 2 cents.
 
I had some and needed to give a couple of coats of super glue. Some of tinware great, some pretty soft. It all looked good in the end.
 
Thanks guys for your advise. I went back and sanded the pins using a small block of maple and it helped quit a bit. It sure was a lot of extra work though. I wish had been using one from the get go. On the few knives that I have made before I let the grinder do most of the work, and only hand sanded a very small amount so I hadn't seen the pimple (appropriate word for it) issue . This time I was really trying to get it good and smooth so I had been hand sanding a lot. Another lesson learned, pretty much always as a block. I went by a local wood working store today and looked at their stabilized wood. Of course they don't carry any scale material, only pen blanks but I know now for sure that I was sent the wrong block. Yet another lesson learned. So I went ahead with the CA finish. It's quite a bit shinier than I was wanting originally, but it looks good. Pretty easy too. I hope it holds up OK.
Thanks again for your help guys.
 
I worked with stabilized for the first time this fall. But I can smell the stabilization resin when I sand. It has a bit of a "fibreglass" resin smell to me. Not strong but definitely different than the smell off unstablized wood.

If it is too shiny just go over it with 1500 or 2000 grit paper to take the shine off it. I think that it might work with fine steel wool too but I haven't tried that. If it is still too shiny at 2000 or 1500, drop to 1200. You won't need to go lower than that.

Randy
 
You can also sand all of the CA off of the surface. It soaks in to the surface and fills all of the pores so there is no need to leave it in a thick coat.
 
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