Lowell

Um, Hi

Charlie as himself.

After having spent the first bit of the module milling up lumber to turn into sample boards (and thank you for that), I turned my attention to surface prepping some pine, birch, maple and poplar. I took each of the species through a sanding of 80-150 grit on the random orbital sander and finished each one by hand sanding with the grain at 150 grit, taking care to break the edges.

From top left: Poplar, Maple, Pine, Birch

Upon returning from the break I set about having some fun with different colour concentrates and stains on a piece of red oak that I had worked the surface prep on. On the bottom four tests I alternated red and yellow concentrate as a base and tested that against stain applied directly to the red oak. While none of the results were very thrilling to me, I did find that the colour Tortilla was the most promising of the four stains that I attempted. Tortilla  had the pleasant effect of evening out the colour across the grain. I found that the colour concentrates were a bit too strong of an effect. 

Concentrates applied 

   Top row: stains applied directly to wood

Bottom row: stains applied over colour concentrate

After experimenting with the red oak I moved on to developing a recipe for my tool box. I started with a piece of pine surface prepped to 150 and set about trying to find a way to put two different coloured stripes across the face of my tool box. I had initially wanted to do centered red and blue stripes on the face of my tool box, but after experimenting decided to abandon this project in favour of a concentrate base with a stain over top. 

From top left: yellow and red concentrate, yellow concentrate, 

red concentrate and red earth stain.

Red earth stain applied over the concentrates, the red,

on the bottom left, was the most desirable.  

Further attempts at trying to make stripes. Variations of white concentrate applied

below colour concentrate with Tortilla stain applied over top. None of these

turned out very well. 

I decided to use Red Earth over a red concentrate to give my tool box the effect of having been on fire. I really wanted to accomplish a finish that let the red show through as though it was smoldering beneath the surface of the finish. In practice this proved to be more challenging than I had expected. 

This picture is taken three steps in. I have already applied a wash coat, the concentrate and 

a layer of lacquer to seal in the colour. The wash coat did not provide the desired effect. It 

changed the penetration of the stain and made it look too pink. This step will be left out of my final version. 

This is the board after I applied the Red Earth stain by hand. The dark marks at the end 

where where I failed to properly remove the stain and let it sit. I believe that I also neglected

to let the lacquer dry properly as the stain made the surface gummy. Although it was not a total success, this

was close to what I was looking for in terms of a finish.