Oxalic to clean wood metal stains in Oak
Keith Newton
I'm trying to assort some of my wide QS White Oak lumber to cut up for drawer fronts / end parts / front elevation. Most of what I need will be 12 1/2" wide, and the lumber is wide enough except there were some nails driven into the tree about 10" in from the outside. The black staining ran up and down about a foot each way, and out about 3" around the nails, so this warned me to find it with my metal detector and cut them out before hitting it with the band-mill blade.
Now that I'm using this wood, I'm needing to include some of that stained wood for some of the larger pieces. What I'm wondering is will the oxalic acid have any penetration, or should I wait until I'm down to the final sanding? I have surfaced and planed it down to the final thickness, but will have 2-3 more grit changes before finishing. I'm thinking I might start now, then do it again closer to finishing.
Oh, One more thing I've been thinking about sharing with those of you that harvest your own wood. The common definition for medullary rays states that they radiate out from the pith. However they may not be a straight line for infinity. They will bend around buttresses and flutes. Another way of thinking about it is that the rays will always be perpendicular to the outer surface. Where this matters, is when your are going for the best yield on a really large Oak, they will often have one or more flat sides. If that flat side has been flat since the tree was 2' smaller, there should be a good stack of 1' wide QS boards that don't need to be tipped up and cut into wedges first to keep the big flakes. So when your trying to break down a large tree with the chainsaw try to plan ahead so that billet ends up going onto the mill so the blade is perpendicular to that side.
