pop goes the ...........well you know.


trz

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well.....to be completely honest, I never really tried a dye treatment on birdseye. Birdseye will certainly be enhanced greatly by a couple coats of oil before topcoating and that is a form of "popping" the grain. How will it respond to a dye treatment to aggressively enhance the visual impact? You might want to test it out first. I have no doubt it will have some effect, but I'm not sure how nice it will look.

With a piece like you have there, a nice oil-based finish will really bring out the beauty and you won't need to mess with dyes.

I am curious though if anyone else has used the dye grain popping method on birdseye and what the results were. Moving this to the finishing forum for greater exposure.

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Nice peice and chops saw too. Somebody, can't remember who, built a hallway/ console table in the 'critique room' and I am pretty sure he popped the Birdseye maple. I remember the thread being lengthy so check it out. Going there in a few and if I find it I will let you know here.

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I pooped the grain on "my first table" (curly maple) using Transtint vintage maple and Arm-r-seal.... hey, I do shat Marc tells us!

Brian , I'm sorry to hear you 'pooped' the grain on your project, hope you were able to clean it up so it looked alright.

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I think you'll be fine with an oil based finish, or an oil pop under waterbase.

The real worry with a board like that is surfacing. Most planers will tear out the eyes. You'll need to either sand the face to final thickness or hand plane at a high angle.

Not to worry,, changed the knives on the planer and all is good.

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Here is the method I used on my guitar, and it is on figured maple to boot! It goes a lot farther than just popping the grain, but the first part of the vid should give you what you need. It uses water based dyes.

http://www.finewoodworking.com/skillsandtechniques/skillsandtechniquesarticle.aspx?id=30182

As always, try it on a a scrap piece first to get your technique down.

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I've planed some birds eye and another thing to add is that spraying the piece with mineral spirits before I put it into the planer helped reduce tear out tremendously-- no clue why

There were no lasting negative effects on my planer or blades as far as I could tell.

Lawrence

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