Sunday, April 20, 2008

Finishing Bloodwood

The tables below are made with center strips that feature Bloodwood, which is a gorgeous crimson color with orange and yellow highlights. Like Purpleheart, it features chatoyancy and the associated play of color with a changing orientation towards the light source.

Like Purpleheart, this wood has some caveats for finishing. As waterborne finishes make a mess of Purpleheart, Shellac makes a mess of Bloodwood. The reason for this is that the colorant in Bloodwood is rapidly brought into solution by alcohol, which is the solvent for Shellac. Alcohol and water are both polar solvents, unlike mineral spirits, turpentine, etc., which are used as solvents for oil based varnishes. When building with Bloodwood, this aspect of the finish has to be taken into account. Any attempts to pad or french polish on shellac is going to fill the pad with Bloodwood dye and bring red color elsewhere into your project.

Furthermore, the movement of the dye is likely to reduce the overall contrast in the appearance of the Bloodwood.

It is possible to spray on waterborne finishes onto Bloodwood, and in this case, I would recommend spraying them on very lightly to begin with so that they dry almost immediately (waterborne tends to dry fast anyway). Build up the first couple of coats very slowly in this manner until a barrier is formed over the wood.

If a "colorless" waterborne finish is used (the manufacturers will often say "water clear" or "crystal clear" to denote these finishes), the effect on Bloodwood can be quite striking. After the application of a blonde shellac or any oil based finish, Bloodwood takes on a color similar to the tones one sees in fire. By going for a crystal clear waterborne finish, the wood is left with a very pure and striking red tone. Varathane in fact appears somewhat bluish, and this can even be topcoated with Shellac in the case of a piece like my tables here (the Purpleheart would be taped off to protect it from the Varathane seal coat).

Otherwise, striking finishes can be had with any of the standard finish types when applied to Bloodwood.

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