Sycamore to Oak

[Fitzroy]

Hi,

I've just finished planing a sycamore slab flat for a coffee table top. After lugging it indoors SHBMO has requested it to be darker, to blend with the other oak furniture in the room. Attached are a couple of pics of, the slab in the room, the slab raw, the slab wetted with white spirits, and a big old knot.

There are some lovely bits of folded (if that's the term) of grain around the knot, and some ripples elsewhere, there are also some dirty looking spots (which reading these forums seems common for poorly dried sycamore). The timber was cheap so I'm happy that the finished article may not be perfect. The slab is also over length so I can do some test finishes on the end and the wife can pick the one she likes. I'm looking for suggestions on how to darken the piece and bring out the grain, if that is possible.

Thanks

Fitz

PS. Yes it needs some legs rather than the kids chairs, but as soon as it was in the room it was just such a perfect place to stand a glass of wine.

In Room

Raw

Wetted with white spirit

Big 'ol' knot

 

[Spindle]

Hi

Oiling will darken the figure but if you wish to darken the whole slab I think you'll need to stain.

Regards Mick

 

[NazNomad]

After lugging it indoors SHBMO has requested it to be darker, to blend with the other oak furniture in the room.

I'd wait a while. After walking into it a couple of times, she'll be requesting that you lug it back out again and buy one with rounded corners. :-D

 

[custard]

Hello Fitzroy, making Sycamore look like Oak is tricky as Oak is an open grained timber while Sycamore is fairly tight grained. Matching the colour isn't hard, but even when you do you'll still notice a considerable difference between the two timbers. However, if your wife is adamant then easiest and safest way is to use an aniline water stain such as this,

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Littlefairs-E ... 4a1TMc8Luw

They're easily available, cheap, compatible with most other finishes, and best of all they don't dry so fast that it makes it hard to maintain a wet edge.

Dampen (not soak!) the entire piece (top and bottom) with hot water and a rag to raise the grain, prop it up on a couple of blocks so the air can circulate all around, knock off the raised fibres with a fairly fine grit paper, apply the stain taking care to maintain a wet edge, if you're unsure about the colour test on a piece of scrap or build up the colour with multiple applications, or dilute the stain for a less intense colour, leave overnight to thoroughly dry off, sand again, apply final protective finish of choice, job done!

The only down side is that the colours are fairly fugitive in sunlight, so it's not the best choice for a piece that will live directly under a south facing window. By the way, the spirit based equivalent aniline stain is often branded as "light fast", in reality aniline spirit stains offer only the very tiniest amount of additional lightfastness so it's really not worth the additional hassle for your purposes. If you absolutely need a non fade colour then you're looking at pigment based products. But even on a reasonably tight grain timber like Sycamore pigmented colour will still tend to obscure the timber grain and look a bit artificial.

Good luck!

 

[yetloh]

Good advice from Custard, but you really need to educate her on the beauty of sycamore (that's a lovely slab you have there) and how drab uniformity is not necessarily a good thing. Perhaps she could be pursuaded to give it a try on the basis that the decision can be revisited if she still doesn't like it after a while. Anything that dulled the lustre of that board would be a crime.

Jim