A-A… Some Stuff I'm Working On (16 years later... finally retired and carving again!!) - Tiki Carving

AA Aaron's Akua Tiki Socialite Rancho Santa Margarita, CA Joined: Jul 09, 2004 Posts: 1546	AA Aaron's Akua Posted posted on Fri, Jul 11, 2025 3:05 PM More progress to share... got the clock face all carved, sanded and ready to go, so I decided on applying a staining technique that I've used in the past, but having a senior moment I couldn't remember exactly what type of stain I used - only the color scheme. So, following the sage advice of the paint guy at Lowe's, I used a gel stain for the deeper parts. The color is "coffee", which looks dark brown on the label but in reality is almost black (which is ok for my purposes). The thing about gel stain is that it's the consistency of pudding, and tends to gob up in the deeper parts so it's hard to smooth out. Might be great for flat vertical surfaces (goes on like thick paint), but really a pain for relief carving. Once I finally got it all fixed up and dried, I sanded off all the flat top surface parts, leaving some dark grain for effect. Interesting look, and my wife thought it would be cool to just apply a natural finish to the light sanded parts... but since I'm going for a different look I applied a second coat of "provincial" color penetrating stain. Lessons learned - penetrating stain doesn't work well with gel stain, which effectively seals off all the wood pores and keeps it from penetrating and drying. I used rags to get as much as I could of the penetrating stain off the darker gel stain parts and set it outside in the 80 degree weather with the fly fans running overhead. Pretty happy with the color scheme so far, just waiting for it to cure up so I can hit it with a lacquer finish. Next steps - lacquer, mounting hardware, mosaic, more lacquer, then add the rope and clock movement. [ Edited by Aaron's Akua on 2025-07-11 15:58:00 ]

More progress to share... got the clock face all carved, sanded and ready to go, so I decided on applying a staining technique that I've used in the past, but having a senior moment I couldn't remember exactly what type of stain I used - only the color scheme. So, following the sage advice of the paint guy at Lowe's, I used a gel stain for the deeper parts. The color is "coffee", which looks dark brown on the label but in reality is almost black (which is ok for my purposes).

The thing about gel stain is that it's the consistency of pudding, and tends to gob up in the deeper parts so it's hard to smooth out. Might be great for flat vertical surfaces (goes on like thick paint), but really a pain for relief carving. Once I finally got it all fixed up and dried, I sanded off all the flat top surface parts, leaving some dark grain for effect.

Interesting look, and my wife thought it would be cool to just apply a natural finish to the light sanded parts... but since I'm going for a different look I applied a second coat of "provincial" color penetrating stain.

Lessons learned - penetrating stain doesn't work well with gel stain, which effectively seals off all the wood pores and keeps it from penetrating and drying. I used rags to get as much as I could of the penetrating stain off the darker gel stain parts and set it outside in the 80 degree weather with the fly fans running overhead. Pretty happy with the color scheme so far, just waiting for it to cure up so I can hit it with a lacquer finish.

Next steps - lacquer, mounting hardware, mosaic, more lacquer, then add the rope and clock movement.

[ Edited by Aaron's Akua on 2025-07-11 15:58:00 ]

Post #816297 by Aaron's Akua on Fri, Jul 11, 2025 3:05 PM