Marquetry: Sanding Dye Coloured Veneers

[Marley the Maker]

Howdy,

I was hoping if there was anybody out there that had any experience using dyed coloured veneers?

I've been using them for a little now in my marquetry projects and I've been experiencing bleeding/contamination from darker colours into lighter colours (usually the green into the yellow and orange) during the final sanding stages (using an orbital sander with vaacum attachment). I have tried vaacuming and even air compressing the bleed out but to no avail.

I have been researching this problem for a while and the only source material I came across was a marquetry book which advised to use a sanding sealer to seal the pores so that the dust was unable to penetrate and therefore contaminate. However, I finish my projects with danish oil and I don't think the sanding sealed would allow the oil the penetrate.

Anyone out there got any advice or better still experience in this problem and a solution???

Cheers

 

[marcros]

have you tried scraping rather than sanding?

 

[custard]

This is one of the classic finishing problems, it's not "bleed" as such, it's dust from darker timbers getting into the pores of lighter timbers. I've even been caught out scraping with a freshly sharpened scraper on Ebony stringing in Sycamore tops. You absolutely have to seal in the colour and body up to fill the grain pores. If your current finishing regime won't allow this then you'll have to change it. I have met incredibly skilful finishers who french polish with abrasive pumice on chess boards, inlay stringing, and even marquetry. But these guys are the very top of the heap, the rest of us have to recognise the problem and then navigate around it, sanding sealer is as good as any of the viable alternatives, straight french polish (i.e. no pumice) is another.