Finishing Koa — "Many Different Ways."

   We also received a Veritas Cabinet Scraper.  It is easy to adjust the scraper with this unit.

  

    This small nut is used to curve the scraper — as her thumbs were doing when using the hand held scraper.

     This scraper is deceiving. The blade is angled so you think that it can be pushed in only one direction like a plane. In fact, the blade is held at an angle, but the scraping edge is a 45o and can scrape equally well in either direction.
   Joslyn liked the way this scraper worked, but she returned to the hand scraper for the closer control it gave her.

   We learned rather quickly that these pieces of Koa are odd shaped and that the Workmate's dogs were not going to hold them effectively, so I found a number of scraps and will hot melt glue one scrap to the bottom of each sample. When it is time to do the reverse side, I think (hope) that the hot melt glue will break off easily.  

   I decided to finish scraping this one  piece. It's a lot of work, and I focused on the left corner. 

    With about 10 minutes of scraping, I have a smooth section except for a half dozen deeper saw marks. I am sure I would have been much better off by either running this piece through the thickness sander or the planer.

   I just had to see the pop out effect of a penetrating oil on this Koa. Wow!!! However it is going to be used, it will be gorgeous.  

     This is the same section but shot without the flash — just the shop's fluorescent lights. I post it here to show that while the oil really pops the grain, it also makes every saw mark very visible.

     Joslyn got a head start on two other finishing methods. Here she uses the belt sander. I have just installed some Norton blue 50 grit belts and this should smooth the surface over quite fast.  We will use this grade and follow it with 80 and 120. We will get back to this next time.

      And Joslyn starts to setup my very favorite sander in the shop, the Festool Rotex 150. It is a random orbital sander but one that the orbit can be changed. She is installing a 36 grit paper for the first step. By changing grits and degree of aggressiveness, we will be able to take this sander all the way through high gloss buffing.
   We will have both sanders at work next week. And we still have the Performax 16/32 thickness sander to use.

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Website: www.leevalley.com
1-800-871-8158