Blackwood Pen - Finish problems

[jking]

Well, I'm fairly addicted to turning pens at this point. I made my first pen a month or two ago & I've done several from rosewood, two from corn cob, & am trying to finish one out of blackwood. For the wood pens I've gone from using Shellawax to using Mylands melamine lacquer.

After final sanding on the blackwood blanks last night, I put on some lacquer. My application method has been to wipe on several light coats with a piece of paper towel. When I did this on the blackwood, I ended up with staining on the paper towel. Can anyone explain what is happening? Am I pulling oil from the wood? Should this still happen even after multiple coats of lacquer? Am I using the wrong finish?

John

[leehljp]

I don't use lacquer on my pens, only CA. However in reading many people's post in situations like this and with many black woods, they have lots of oil that do prevent lacquer and or even CA and other finishes from sticking in some circumstances.

I haven't had any problems with CA sticking to oily woods but some have. I usually wipe the blank down with acetone or denatured alcohol whether they are oily or not. Most people that I know that uses lacquer usually rub oily blanks with acetone too and have much less problems when they do it that way.

[jking]

I guess I didn't realize blackwood was that oily. The interesting thing though was when I sanded after the third coat of lacquer, it definitely looked like there was finish on the pen. Will I probably have to sand back down to bare wood & refinish? Or, can I possibly wipe it down as is with acetone or dna & salvage the finish?

Does anyone know of a resource that lists woods & gives information such as "oily", "turns well", etc.

John

[gerti]

Oily dense woods sometimes need no finish at all. But if you want to use one, as others mentioned rubbing the surface with solvent to remove the oil form the surface as prep will help.