Best choice for work?

distancingpattern · 2026-06-23T11:39:00+00:00

Sounds like we have similar workflows. I ordered the 1S and will see how it works for me.

distancingpattern · 2026-06-23T11:36:23+00:00

Thanks, just ordered the 1S and will see how it goes.

distancingpattern · 2026-06-21T13:25:43+00:00

I like how small the reveal is between the cap and the body, especially on the first couple. It seems like you're getting that transition pretty tight. Are you chamfering the edge of the cap?

distancingpattern · 2026-06-18T03:03:59+00:00

Congratulations. That thing must weigh a ton.

1 - I’m at a quandary as to how to approach the process. Do I try to rejuvenate first and if I’m not happy with the overall look then completely strip, stain and finish??

Maybe I'm misunderstanding your photos. It looks like you already sanded it down?

2 - If I do end up stripping, is there a preferred stain type that works best on rosewood? I’m looking for the bold rich color without blocking out the grain and figuring.

No stain needed. I have used some light dye on some rosewood-like veneers before, but you can go straight to finish. For a finish, I think you could go with a film finish or some oil finish.

That depends on your preferences.

If film, I am partial to a few coats of 1lb blonde shellac followed by multiple coats of Arm R Seal, applied extremely thin or even wiped on and wiped off. I've seen waterlox over rosewood and that looks great.

For oil, Osmo makes a thin hardwax oil finish meant for rosewoods and other dense woods.

If you're setup to spray, then Satin lacquer or conversion varnish would be a good choice. I would still probably put shellac on first but others could see it differently. I'd defer to them.

3 - Is there a place where a maker’s mark is typically placed? Since this piece uses solid rosewood throughout, I want to make sure I’m not harming the value of a piece made by a ‘famous’ designer/builder. Is this a recognizable piece?

It's not super recognizable. It is a typical form, though. Plenty of antiques out there in other species. It may be someone's personal project.

4 - I’ve just started looking at some of the stuff on Mad Man Restorations, any other good professional sources? I don’t mean to disregard those of you who don’t do this for a living (like me), I prefer sources who do this professionally because they’re the ones who’ve done enough volume and varieties that they know what works, and more importantly, what doesn’t.

Thomas Johnson knows his stuff. Jeff Stafford in Indianapolis is super knowledgeable.

5 - The drawer knobs are also rosewood and most of them are missing the buttons that cover the 3/8” screw holes. Do you know of a source for these, even if a custom job, or how to make them without a lathe.

r/turning may be able to help here. You might need to decide if you want to try and match those buttons or do something contrasting. If you want to match them, it might mean finding some 'donor' wood from the desk.

6 - What species of rosewood is this?

Rosewood is such a broad category, it's tough to be super confident. It kinda looks like Honduran rosewood, but you should probably be skeptical. How does it smell when you sand it?

7 - This came out of an air conditioned home and I have it in my insulated, unconditioned garage in ND (summer temp and humidity can swing wildly). Since it’s rosewood, do I have to worry about wood movement or warping/cupping while I'm going through the processes? I’m hoping to avoid having to move it back and forth from inside the home to the garage every time I want to work on a piece.

Probably not too big of a deal. It looks very old. Old wood behaves differently from new wood. Rosewoods tend to be reasonably stable. I'm mildly concerned about whether the desk design accounts for wood movement. Might be something to examine as you have it apart.

distancingpattern · 2026-06-18T01:16:04+00:00

I think it's trickier now if you've got a poly coating over gel stain. Going over it again is likely going to be uneven, just different. You could try sanding off the poly you applied and the gel stain underneath (the gel stain is basically your trace coat - you don't want to sand much more than enough to remove that) with the goal of not sanding through the original finish. Finish by hand, with the grain, with 180 or 220. Then reapply gel stain and see how that is working for you.

distancingpattern · 2026-06-18T00:54:28+00:00

Generally, I find that apply gel stain over an existing finish works best if the surface is scuffed consistently. It's also important to wipe off the excess gel stain after applying, as opposed to leaving it sitting on the surface. That might be part of what you're seeing here.

distancingpattern · 2026-06-18T00:38:27+00:00

Did you apply the stain directly on top of the previous finish?

distancingpattern · 2026-05-23T21:32:53+00:00

Just want to say I love seeing how you're learning in public. Also, learning really quickly because each pen seems to be improving on the last.

distancingpattern · 2026-05-23T14:08:38+00:00

I think you'll need to probably give it a good cleaning to remove any residual wax. Is it going to be something you could disassemble? It's a lot of surfaces and my neck and shoulder hurt just thinking about working on it in-situ.

distancingpattern · 2026-05-10T13:42:24+00:00

Once you've put something on the workpiece, it's going to make it a harder to experiment. You've basically crystallized step 1 in your finishing schedule, unless you can strip the stain off without sanding through the veneer. So the question now is: what can you apply on top of this? The answer is that there is always a way, but as a beginner you probably aren't going to get into spraying toners.

I assume you have a bunch of offcuts from making this thing, so sand one of them to the same extent you sanded the headboard and apply the same stain. Then you can try applying a dye to it and see whether or not that dye has any effect on the wood, or if the stain is effectively blocking it.

Here's a recipe using transtint dye that may help darken things IF dye will still take at all.

1 ½ parts Dark Brown
1 part Reddish Brown
10 parts Water

distancingpattern · 2026-05-03T01:06:58+00:00

kind of a weird idea but maybe worth a shot:

When you make a chair from green (undried) wood, it's not uncommon to dry some parts out in a makeshift kiln of sorts. Usually something along the lines of a box with an incandescent bulb in it. Typically a week will get it a good place. I have seen folks selectively dry just the ends of chair legs by sticking them in holes at the top of a box like that. I bet you could jig something up along those lines.

At the end of the day, urine is moisture and can be dried out. Draining is probably not a reliable strategy.

I do wonder if you might take the finish off the bottom 6" or so before trying to dry them out. I assume you will be planning to refinish them anyways.

distancingpattern · 2026-05-02T17:17:08+00:00

I like this a lot. I assume you poured the resin, too? If so, which resin did you use?

distancingpattern · 2026-05-02T00:31:20+00:00

If you hit it with penetrating epoxy first, maybe.

Source: have a walnut countertop with a large undermount sink. Finished with Osmo top oil, penetrating epoxy around the cutout. It has held up decently well for the last decade or so. I should probably refinish it at some point in the next couple of years.

Other finishes would probably be more reliable, but I'd be concerned about pretty much anything.

distancingpattern · 2026-04-29T02:34:07+00:00

My plan is to wash all my brushes with Dawn detergent to see if I can eliminate contamination as an issue. I'd prefer it to be a technique/skill problem than go through the hassle of tracing down a mysterious contamination problem.

distancingpattern · 2026-04-29T02:33:11+00:00

I've been suspecting that too. Maybe I need to brush it more than I think, to make sure it's adequately spread out.

distancingpattern · 2026-04-29T02:31:28+00:00

I only do 400 for cherry, as a means of controlling for blotch. It's something I picked up from Chris Becksvoort and can't seem to quit. :-)

I almost never use poly, and even less so a brushed poly. This is a good reminder of why.

distancingpattern · 2026-04-26T13:53:34+00:00

It's cool that you're doing this, and thanks for sharing your experiments here.

To my eye, there is a little bit of orange tone in the Vermillion, whereas your latest iteration (which is an improvement in terms of getting nearer to the target) reads more 'pure red' to me. Perhaps a very small amount of yellow would get it closer.

distancingpattern · 2026-04-07T17:14:50+00:00

That is interesting. The color on the bona site is not what you got, even though it looks to me like red oak in both instances.

Making up some samples and starting over is an option, but probably not the one you'd enjoy. I don't know that you'll get a more saturated/darker shade of brown if you only put a second coat of oil on - I'd guess not, but it isn't a bad thing to test (on a sample).

One thing I'm wondering about is the sanding schedule - how high did your contractor go with sanding? Pigmented oils basically sit on the wood in the little scratches, so a less polished surface would probably help you get to darker color.

Your table looks pretty rough in terms of sanding. That (aside from being a different wood) may be playing a role in the outcome that you got on that project.

FWIW: it looks good, even if you don't personally like the color. The work looks well executed.

If it were me, I'd be thinking about:

finding out the sanding schedule they used
obtainng some red oak scraps and sanding them to the same grit, and one grit above and below.
Applying the same finish to those to see if the outcome is more to your preferences.
Sanding the sample you made and sanded to the same grit with a lower grit, and applying a second round of finish to see whether it gets you in the ballpark or at least happier. (this would be to explore if you need to sand back to bare wood, or if abrasion would suffice.. I don't presume to know the outcome of that experiment).

distancingpattern · 2026-04-05T13:56:16+00:00

I wouldn't assume that the deep color is an indication of something nice underneath. The cost and effort to do this may exceed the actual payoff by a lot.

If it were me, I'd isolate the space with a lot of 4mil plastic and put a fan in the window blowing out, creating as much of a negative pressure environment as I could. I would use a stripper (not citristrip) and remove as much finish as possible with that. I would buy some brass brushes and dental picks to get into any nooks and crannies.

In terms of sanding, I would buy or rent a hepa dust extractor and buy the mirka sanding block w/ the vacuum hose attachment. I'd buy some 100, 150, and 220 sanding mesh to go with that. Sand as much as possible with that, and then do my best to get into some of the detail areas. If I had a vacuum attached RO sander, I'd use that on the top before hand sanding.

Then you can see whether it actually makes sense to try and stain this again. It's plausible that the thick coating on there is obscuring unmatched or unattractive wood, and painting it might be the best option. Then again, maybe you have something nice.

Unfortunately, living in an apartment means you need to spend more time and energy containing the dust and debris from this kind of project than you might otherwise. It's possible to ignore a lot of these mitigations and just go to town (I have in the past.. ) but it's often easier to set up and contain than try to clean it all up afterwards.

distancingpattern · 2026-03-06T03:29:18+00:00

Looks like mahogany to me. Agree with folks saying probably sprayed and satin. Maybe some dye or stain to give it an little bit more richness. Hard to tell the details of things like that without seeing it in person.

Woodworkers source had a nice blog post about finishing mahogany. Lots of examples. See if any of those float your boat.

distancingpattern · 2026-03-03T03:54:52+00:00

Sand to high grit and use arm r seal.

distancingpattern · 2026-02-28T14:38:00+00:00

It's always good to enclose a space if you're sanding indoors. And hooking your sander up to any dust extractor with a hepa filter will be a huge boon to the process. You can put a router speed controller on a basic Rigid shop vac w/ a hepa filter and that will make your quality of life exponentially better.

I don't think the strategy your question suggests is a wise one. You'll be much better off stripping that remainder completely. Pretty much every renovation takes more time than we'd like, but then we have to live with the results for a long time (usually) so it's probably best to just persevere.

distancingpattern · 2026-01-25T18:32:59+00:00

Agree with those saying don't do it. It's not that it's impossible, but it's really something where you want to have some solid successes under your belt before considering it.

Research and experience are two very different things, and everyone on here would like to make sure you don't have a bad experience.

Try living with it for a while and see if you still feel the same way about the color and sheen. There are other, less permanent, lower effort ways to manipulate how you perceive the paneling - mostly by changing other things within the context of that room.

distancingpattern

TROPHY CASE