Red Oak for Arts and Crafts style? finishing?

Red doesn't, and won't look like white. It'll look pretty if you treat it
right, and that means not like white. Your "fumed" finish will have to come
from a can of stain. As long as you don't mix in the same piece, should
make a nice bed.

"JMWEBER987" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> Recently got a pickup truck load of red oak thats currently drying and is
down
> to about 14 percent. My wife would like a new bed for our new queen size
> mattress with matching side tables and I have some plans for this project.
I
> believe that quartersawn white oak was mostly used for the original arts
and
> crafts furniture but is there any reason red oak would not be okay?

"George" <george@least> wrote in news:[email protected]:

> Red doesn't, and won't look like white. It'll look pretty if you
> treat it right, and that means not like white. Your "fumed" finish
> will have to come from a can of stain. As long as you don't mix in
> the same piece, should make a nice bed.
>
George is correct that you can make some nice furniture in this style with
the red oak. You're likely going to want to get really familiar with dyes,
rather than pigment stains. DAGS for this oft-covered topic.

I'd like to add that you will want to pay attention to grain, particularly
with red oak. The relatively open grain will take stain differently than
will most other woods. This means that you need to understand what that
will mean in your finished projects, or you will have more, (or possibly
less) grain showing than you wish to have.

Make a small table, or something with a leg similar to what you anticipate
using on your magnus opus. Use you finishing schedule (which you have
tested earlier on scrap), and see how the grain looks after a couple of
weeks. Red oak has a tendency to look considerably different on edge grain
from face grain, in the same piece.

Woodsmith, FWW and probably a number of other magazines have had articles
over the past few years on how to take what you've got, and make it behave
more closely like QS, or match up well within the one leg piece. They've
explained it better than I could here.

And have fun with this project. It's nice to build stories for the family
for later on.

Patriarch

Re: Finishing recommendations for red oak....

We've been doing a great deal of work with red oak over the past few months on
an arts and crafts style home. Beams, moldings, mantles and archways are all
red oak finished to match some of the original architectural woodworking. We
take pains to mill it without tear out, which you need to watch for on this
large grained wood. Then we finish it to 150grit, taking pains not to lift
edges (and impail our hands on gigantic splinters) when breaking them. Use
sandpaper wrapped around a block with slightly rounded edges to avoid this. We
then flood it with a golden oak/walnut stain mix to start. Then we apply 2
coats of dyed satin varnish, sanding lightly in between. We leave the pores
only partially filled. It looks nice.

JP