Tips for finishing curly cherry

[Kmac1960]

Greetings all, I'm making a hall table & using some curly cherry for the top. I Don't have any experience with curly cherry & am looking for suggestions on the best way to finish it. I want a natural finish. My usual finish with cherry is BLO & Arm-R-Seal top coat, any issues doing the same with the curly? TIA

[Scoony]

I have never used Seal-a-cell, but I am wondering if that would blotch like BLO does. Another thing to try is wiping on a thin coat of pure tung oil. It is not as dark as BLO and if your wiping on a thin coat, should not blotch, but that needs some testing.

[JR1]

I like shellac as it really brings up the grain without blotching. Ruby is particularly nice on cherry but Thai seed or Garnet look good as well. If you can spray shellac is very easy to spray. If the table is not going to be hard use two or three coats of shellac will be fine—it's very easy to repair. If you want to topcoat Arm-R-Seal will work but darken the color further. Any of the GF waterborne finishes will work without changing the color except for EnduroVar which has a slight amber color.

[cputnam]

I've had luck with a spit coat (<= 1# cut) of shellac well sanded back after drying. Then a quick wipe on coat of oil (as a colorant) wiped as each surface is coated. Then top coat with garnet shellac. If you want something more durable then the waterbased top coat (Endurovar) thoughts are said to work very well.

The spit coat of shellac seems to seal up the exposed end grain more than long grain and still remains after it's gone off the long grain.

TEST, and then TEST some more

[jteneyck]

My experience is the same as Scoony's - oils blotch on curly cherry. Doesn't matter if it's BLO, Seal-A-Cell, etc. I would wipe or spray on a thin coat of dewaxed shellac and then go to Arm-R-Seal. Or just try Arm-R-Seal by itself.

Test whatever you choose on scrap to make sure you are satisfied.

John

[Bøb]

Consider Charles Neil's BLOTCH CONTROL ... great product for just this situation.

[Martin S.]

Bøb said:

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Consider Charles Neil's BLOTCH CONTROL ... great product for just this situation.

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OK, dumb question here.

If you do blotch control on curly cherry, will it make the curl show up less?

I thought the objective was to highlight the curl?

[Paul K. Murphy]

Using blotch control on curly cherry to achieve "blotch control" sounds like chainsawing people's heads off to achieve "head control."

[Kansas City Fireslayer]

I used CN's blotch control on maple cabinets and it did a great job of keeping everything even with limited splotch. That said, I had one raised panel with some heavy curl in it and the transient dye still popped the figure. The best of both worlds, I guess.

[jasfrank]

I have used the Neal product on fir wainscoting and it worked very well. It didn't have wild figure, just straight grain, but fir blotches as easy as any wood I've ever used.