Post #492005 by SDshirtman on Wed, Nov 4, 2009 2:36 PM

Hello everyone. I haven't updated this in a few days as its been a busy week. Had a lot of work to do plus Halloween falling on the weekend left me little time for working on my tiki. So here is an update.

I finished sanding him and got him ready to stain. I bought some walnut minwax and did some samples on a separate piece of pine. They turned out WAY too dark so I exchanged the walnut for some lighter golden oak. (Thanks for the tip Bill)
I stained him Wednesday and he came out not as dark as I was hoping. It was a learning experience.
Since I decided not to burn him I didnt have the contrast in the deeper cut areas I wanted. So my solution was to darken those areas with an airbrush. I used some transparent dark brown paint instead of opaque black paint. That way I can only go so dark if I went overboard. I used it pretty sparingly.
I gave him a few days to dry and then him with the stain again to darken him up. I finished the second coat and this time he came out too dark. Or so I thought. A few days later and he seemed to lighten up a touch as the wood soaked up the stain. He's still darker then I intended though.

I was also wanting to to some kind of tribal design work on parts of him. I found some traditional patterns I liked on the interwebs. I was going to use one of those acrylic paint pens but after some test I abandoned that idea. The main reasons were that the paint bled too much, the color sucked and the line width was too fat. It was also incompatible with the poly I tested it with. When I hit the dry paint pen with the poly it melted like I just poured acetone on it.
My wife sugessted picking up a cheap 25w wood burning pen. (Gee why didnt I think of that?) It worked like a charm and I like the fact that it will never fade or flake off.
So last night I finished burning in some patterns on his eyebrows and headdress.

Late last night I was going to give him a coat of satin poly before I realized I bought the indoor stuff instead of the outdoor spar poly.
So after yet another trip to Home Depot today I was able to give him a coat of poly to seal him up. He's been drying for 2 hours now and I'm still getting used to the sheen he's got. I have some pictures to post as soon as I download them to my computer. Should be later tonight or tomorrow.

[ Edited by: SDshirtman 2009-11-04 14:42 ]