Mission Style End Table with Slate, Part 2

Here is the table top with the slate installed. I sprayed it with Deft Clear Wood Finish, a lacquer finish with a satin sheen. Both the wood and the slate were sprayed. The lacquer added more amber color to the top making it a bit darker than I wanted. I'm starting to have reservations about using slate. The finish highlights any scratches and the surface is too bumpy. I plan to attach the top with screws so I can change it later if I get motivated.

I want to have an enclosed shelf underneath the top to store books and other stuff. To make it challenging, I'm trying to have curved sides to match the curve in the top. I've never tried bending wood before because it looked pretty involved. I wanted to see whether I could just veneer quarter-sawn oak to ⅛" MDF and bend it to the curve I needed.
To experiment, I've cut 15° angle slots into what would be the table legs. I've screwed a board to the legs and wedged a narrow board under the MDF at the peak of the curve. I was worried that the curved veneer would flex when pushed, but it's very stiff. This may work!

Mission Style End Table with Slate, Part 1

I've wanted to integrate slate with wood and thought I'd share my progress on an end table that I've just started. I had a piece of plain sawn oak that I want to make more interesting. I glued quarter-sawn white oak veneer to it to make the top more interesting. I plan to apply the Mission Style finish that I described in an earlier posting.

Here is what it looks like after applying Mahogany gel stain. Notice that the grain pattern is now more visible because the pigment gets lodged into the pores. I'm going to let it dry over night and then sand off any stain on the wood surface while leaving the stain in the grain to accentuate the pattern.

After I sanded the stain with 220 grit, I sprayed on a brown water-based dye. To protect the dye from subsequent operations, I then sprayed with Bulls Eye Shellac. Now I'm ready to glue the plywood bottom for the slate and then insert the tile into the tabletop.

Toning for Accent

Its been too cold in the shop lately so I haven't done much finishing this month. I received a tile that a relative had made and used some scraps of cherry to make a frame for it. I routed a pair a beads on the edge and sprayed it with a water based red dye. I usually use a water based finish so to protect the dye, I sealed it with Bulls Eye Clear Shellac. Then I noticed that the beads didn't really stand out. It was only when they cast a shadow did they show well.

This gave me an idea to try toning to simulate a shadow. Toning is selectively applying stain over a finish to highlight some feature. Most articles about toning say you need to spray it but for my frame, I just wanted to apply a little dark stain on each side of the bead. I decided to try an artist marker of the shade I wanted. The product I used is called Prismacolor which is a dye in an alcohol solvent. Applying it on the shellac is a bad idea since it is alcohol based too. This time I needed to seal the shellac. Since it was still too cold to spray a water based finish, I sprayed a coat of lacquer which isn't very temperature sensitive. I then used the fine point edge of the marker and drew a line between the two beads and then on each side. I sprayed another coat of lacquer to seal the dye. It was just enough to get the beads to "pop out" in any lighting.

Night Stand

I wanted to show you what I did with the table top that was used to try different spraying techniques. The center of the top is ash veneer on plywood and the surrounding wood is a figured cherry veneer on plainsawn cherry. I ran out of cherry for the legs and was wondering how close I could match the color using poplar. I sprayed the same red dye as I had used on the cherry, then sealed it by spraying with clear shellac. Finally, I used a water-based finish. The whole finishing process took less than three hours of which two and half were waiting for the wood to dry.

The wood surface on the legs is a little rougher than I want. The water in the dye has caused some of the wood fibers to raise. I could have tried sanding it lightly after applying the shellac, but I was concerned about removing some of the stain. Next time I will first spray the wood with water and sand it smooth after it dries.

I'm please with the poplar and feel that I could have applied veneer over it on the table top and saved some money.

Cleaning a spray gun in 3 minutes

When I first investigated HVLP spray guns I was apprehensive about cleaning them. It sounded like you needed a fairly large project to justify the time and hassle of maintaining the gun. I have two gravity type guns, a full size one with a 20oz cup and another gun with a small 4oz cup intended for detail or repair work. The small gun is more than sufficient for 90% of my spraying jobs and the bonus is that I can clean it in less than 3 minutes.

So far, I'm have only used the small gun for spraying water-based dye and water-based finish. On my projects, I typically spray dye first and after it dries (usually in less than 30 minutes) I then spray Bulls Eye Clear Shellac to protect the dye from the water-based finish. While I could spray the shellac with gun, for most small projects, I use the Bulls Eye spray can. Finally I use the small gun to spray two coats of Minwax Polycrylic.

 Cleaning the Air Cap, Needle, Nozzle, Cup, and Gun body

These are the steps I take to clean my gun after using it to spray water-based dye and finish. I usually have a milk container filled with water and a plastic bowl that I clean over.

1. Remove the air hose from the sprayer
2. Pour left over dye or finish back into their containers.
3. Rinse out the cup several times with water.
4. Fill the cup with a couple ounces of water and pull the trigger until the dye or finish has drained and only water is being passed through the gun. You may want to back the needle off to make this faster.
5. Remove the air cap. Run some water over it to clean.
6. Remove the nozzle. Run some water through it from the back. Blow some air through it from your mouth. Looking through it from the back, verify that there are no obstructions.
7. Run some more water through the gun. This will clean the cavity in the gun body.
8. Whip the cup dry with a paper towel. Sometimes you may see a residual color on the cup from the dye. Dampen a paper towel with alcohol and whip the color off.