Est. 1998 — 27 years of woodworking knowledge
Reversing mistake question
ebd
Yeah, I know - try it on a waste piece first. Too late.
I used Teak Oil on a macassar Ebony box and it turned the macassar pure black. After I wiped as much as I could off and it started to dry a wee bit of color came back. I'm going to try and re-sand hoping some or all of the color can be recaptured.
Anyone have any other ways I could get the macassar colors back?
Acetone?
John in NM
Try repeated acetone wipes. I've used that on surplus gunstocks that had a lot of machine oil soaked in. Lacquer thinner works too, any light and aggressive solvent.
Shellac when done instead of oil. I've never messed with macassar ebony, but that is what I would try on wood that the oil darkens too much.
scraping...
David Weaver
..I've done a fair amount of screwing around with oils on rosewood making planes and guitar parts, and it usually doesn't penetrate that deeply.
On refrets with guitars, it generally takes very little to get off decades of various oils and get to to brighter wood.
But, I appreciate your post for another reason - I like dark fingerboards to be dark, but don't wish to stain, and I haven't tried teak oil yet and will to see if it can work its magic on my macassar and other woods.
Agree with john's suggestion of removing as much as possible with a solvent if refreshing a complex surface isn't an option.
Re: Reversing mistake question
Brian from monument colorado
In gunsmithing there is a product called "whiting" that is used to get oil out of stocks. It is available from Brownells.com. I don't know if it works for all oils or just lubrication oils.
reasonable aproach
Bill Tindall, E.Tn.
Instead of "wipe" I might suggest slather or even soak and extract.
Re: Reversing mistake question
JL
On the notion that like dissolves like...
Not that I argue w/ acetone possibly dissolving teak oil.
I would think that odorless mineral spirits would be a place to start.
A good place to start
Bill Tindall, E.Tn.
Who knows what Teak oil is? A guess would be one of the vegetable oils- Tung, Linseed, ??? Acetone will be a better solvent than mineral spirits but it comes with the disadvantages that it is less likely a woodworker will have it on hand, flammability(not to be overlooked) and it will evaporate quicker making it harder to use.
Unless it has started to cure, likely by now presuming if Teak Oil is a drying oil formulation of some sort, mineral spirits will dissolve and extract it. But it won't dissolve it once it starts to cure. If Tung Oil is a curing oil like Tung , it has cross linked and likely can't be extracted from where it has penetrated into the wood. This situation is completely different from extraction of non-curing lubricating oil from wood, a gun stock for example.
A large number of finishing posts on this Forum involve rescue from something gone wrong, on the finished work. When I start a project I set aside a trimming from the wood I actually use, to be used to conduct finishing experiments on, should they be needed.
Re: A good place to start
ebd
I usually do. Don't know why I didn't this time. Lesson learned, though.