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Old September 10, 2010, 07:55 PM   #8
Dfariswheel
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Join Date: May 4, 2001
Posts: 7,476
One step often missed in stock finishing is "whiskering" the wood before adding any finish.

When you sand wood, tiny splinters are exposed and when a finish or stain is applied, they stand up, giving a rough surface.
To eliminate this you need to "whisker" the wood.
To do this, sand the wood to the point where you're ready to apply finish.
Use a fairly damp cloth or sponge to wet about 1/3 of the stock at a time, then quickly dry the wood by using a heat gun, torch, or stove top burner.
When you apply the heat, you can see the wet wood quickly dry, so don't over-heat or char any sharp corners or edges.

This fast drying causes the water to turn to steam. This causes the tiny splinters to stand upright, AND it steam cleans the wood, blasting sanding dust out of the pores of the wood, opening the grain for the finish.

With the wood dry, use either DEGREASED 0000 steel wool, or better, a grocery store green Scotchbrite type scrub pad to lightly rub the wood WITH THE GRAIN.
The steel wool or Scotchbrite pads loops will catch the tiny splinters and cut them off.
Sand paper won't do for this, since all it will do is press the tiny splinters right back down.

Whisker the wood 1 to 3 times to get all the splinters, but don't rub the stock after the last whiskering. The steam will have cleaned out the pores of the wood and opened them up.
This will allow the first thinned coat of finish to soak into the wood better and prevents a "muddy" look to the final finish.

Whiskering the wood before applying a finish was one of the old time Master stockmaker's tricks of the trade for an ultra smooth finish with no muddying or obscuring of the grain.
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