Ebony Dust staining Sycamore when finishing

[kayak23]

We have some marquetry to do using ebony veneer which is quite coarse-grained and its being inlaid into Sycamore as the base veneer.

After pressing, sanding the whole panel down produces horrible dirty staining in the grain of the Sycamore from the dust of the ebony.

It won't blow out with compressed air, we've tried scraping it but the grain directions are all alternating and its veneer so is very thin.

This has also been a problem when inlaying ebony stringing into maple or Ash boxes.

With the solid boxes, i thought of doing all the finishing on the ash/maple, then sanding sealer it, then doing the inlay as normal. May work, may not, but obviously you can't really do this with veneers as the whole panel needs to be as one before it is pressed.

Any ideas to stop this?

 

[jasonB]

How are you doing the sanding, the table in my avitar is maple with ebony I used a randon orbit sander linked up to an extractor and had no problems.

Jason

 

[woodbloke]

Never, ever sand ebony and a lighter wood...scrape to finish only :wink: - Rob

 

[Ian]

I have used a Random orbit sander many times with these wood combinations and have had no problems, if I find some black dust in the sycamore grain I blow it out with an airline (do not rub as this will embed it into the grain)

Hand sanding is best for light finishing passes and should only be carried out after it has been scraped and sealed.

Ian

 

[ondablade]

Presuming the bond can stand it maybe rubbing some sticky tape down on it and peeling it off might help lift the dust. Test a bit somewhere to ensure there's no residue or damage...

 

[wizer]

What about the abranet hand sanding block with vac attachment?

 

[gasman]

I agree with Rob - the final finishing must be done with a freshly sharpened card scraper or scraper plane - otherwise minute contamination is likely

 

[OPJ]

What about putting a coat of sealer on and then sanding - would that help at all?

At guy at college last year made a table, mostly from maple, but inlayed with all sorts of darker woods (it looked like a giant xylophone! ). With all the bits glued in, the whole top went through the wide belt sander without any dark dust getting in to the maple grain. Good dust extraction was the key.

 

[kayak23]

We've got pretty powerful dust extraction on our Bosch orbital but it still seems to make the area surrounding the marquetry grey and horrible.

Abranet might be interesting to try. That chess table above looks immaculate, funny how it hasn't happened there.

Perhaps the ebony we have is particularly coarse and dry.

As mentioned, hand scraping seems to work ok but its not really ideal on veneers and with multi-directional grains....

 

[TrimTheKing]

I'm no expert but everything I've ever read on inlaying says NEVER to sand, only ever plane or scrape light/dark combo's.

I would say those who sand have been lucky rather over anything else.

 

[miles_hot]

I'd agree with Olly - I'm sure that I read somewhere to seal the whole surface and then do your sanding / scraping. That way the lighter wood is sealed against the dust (and visa versa the light wood will not be lightened)...

I thought that one of the key things about scraping was that it could easily deal with wild grain? Mind you having never actually done it I really wouldn't trust that comment

Miles

 

[matthewwh]

Are you squaring and polishing the edge and faces of your scraper before you ticket it and roll the burr? A correctly sharpened scraper should be indifferent to grain direction.