Something Might Have Gone Wrong

Ugh. Here is how something goes really wrong. This is supposed to be a simple shelf, and early on it got contaminated. Ever since then I've been struggling to seal it, or get the contamination out, or both. In the end I was forced to drench the piece in shellac, and then started topcoating with a waterbase (from a company whom I won't name, but the products tend to piss me off). I never got the nice finish I wanted, so had to sand down again and the thin areas of the finish became partially exposed, so back to shellac. This is the underside, so I pretty much left it at this.

I sanded the other side down to bare wood and began to lacquer it. Generally you do not want two different types of finish on either side since that will give differential absorbtion of humidity which results in warping. On this piece when I sanded it down, because it's purpleheart, I had to expose it to sunlight to restore the color. This caused a differential change in humidity... it dried out, and created a severe cupping. Before going ahead and sanding down the underside completely, I decided to expose it to sunlight to see if I could restore it.

Well either water or some solvents that had not completely boiled off decided to go gaseous under the sunlight much faster and in greater quantity than I had thought. After a morning, the bubbles on the right hand side are what happened.

I'm also wondering if it's actually solvent from the lacquer from the other side, which is a week old, that has been sitting deep in the wood. Purpleheart is very porous, so it would not be much of a problem for a solvent to travel right through a thick piece of wood like this.

Anyway, chalking this one up to major defeat.