This piece was a series of mistakes and poor decisions from the start. I had some spalted wood of unknown species, and also what I think is Peruvian walnut, white oak and padauk. I found myself having to solve problems I caused, at just about every step. First thing I did wrong was pick up a project I started years ago. I had 4 sides of a box taped together with grooves for the splines. I guess I felt if I glued it up first I was committed. I wanted to see if I could still finish this box several years later, so I cut a bottom and some splines and glued it all together. Now I had to make the top, which to my amazement was just about the only thing that went pretty much as I had hoped.
Once I started to sand with finer grits, I noticed a few little voids where the wood chipped, but it was minor, so I didn’t care to much. I didn’t like the way things were looking, it just seemed blah, so I decided to carve the box with my orbital sander/grinder and an 80 grit disk. Having never tried this before I just went at it, thinking the box might go in the trash anyway.
I was fairly happy with my progress until I messed up on the front corner of the box. I kept trying to fix it until I ground away too much of one of the splines and it looked odd. Now the box was no longer a rectangle and I couldn’t fix the spline on my tablesaw, so I used a hand saw and cut the groove by hand. Making the bottom of the groove flat was a real pain, but I accomplished it with a temporary chisel I made out of a nail.
Now I needed some more Padauk to replace the damaged spline. I just grabbed a small scrap, made another spline and glued it in. I was very happy with the results, it was hardly noticeable, I was pleased.
Before this was treated with BLO it had about the same color as Walnut.
Also as you can see above, prior to the BLO all the splines were less obvious.
After the oil finish the box kind of looked muddy, so I followed up with shellac. Inadvertently I picked a scrap of Padauk that was not from the same board as the other splines, or it was oriented differently. Once I applied the oil and shellac this spline looked like it had a light behind it. Oh well, just another screw up.
Because I glued the dividers into the tray, I couldn’t get the shellac on smoothly. I kept either leaving streaks or I was unable to get into the corners very well. This ended up looking bad, so I tried using 3M pads and wax to smooth everything out. That didn’t work for the same reason, gluing the dividers in was really dumb.
So I got some alcohol on a brush and rag and removed everything so I could start over. After that I had to sand again to make sure I got it all smooth. So now I tried Deft satin spray lacquer and that looked much better, but now I think it might be too shiney for my taste. I will probably go over the whole thing again with a 3M pad and wax to knock down some of the shine.
So I’m going to post this anyway because, even though I’m not sure what to do with it. My wife said she likes it, but I still might knock down the shine and put it in storage with the rest of my projects I don’t know what to do with.
If you’ve managed to read this far, I’m flattered. It's a bitch when you cause your own problems like I do.