High or Low: A beginner's conundrum...and other questions...

[Trafalgar]

How do you know? You said you don't build furniture. Burnish with which set of shavings? The ones from the power planer? scrub plane? jack plane? jointer? smoother?

How many different wood finishes have you ever applied?

I think you're confusing burnishing turned parts on the lathe while under power. Rubbing mouldings and other curved parts by hand with some set of shavings isn't going to do much if anything at all. It takes a while to notice any difference on a turned part spinning at 800 rpm or more. It might take more time to burnish a part, well, on a lathe than it did to turn the profile in the first place. In fact, it probably should as a rule.

Otherwise, I think that 'burnish it with shavings' is mostly so the 'I've never used a scraper or sandpaper' crowd won't spoil their own narrative, if not their own delusion.

 

[D_W]

Smoother shavings. It's not hard (they're always right in front of you or on the floor), and though I haven't read it in a text, I can't imagine that it wasn't standard practice to make a surface uniform for finish.

Burnishing something like knitting needles on a lathe, much different - but nice. Shavings after scraper just evens the surface enough so that the uptake of sanding sealer is similar (and thus color).

I have built cabinets and cases. It's not something I'd do for no reason, because I don't fancy myself a magnate of furniture while watching my wife go off to work so that I can *pretend* that I have a legitimate business that couldn't exist on its own. You know?

 

[Trafalgar]

David, I doubt that you have the physical endurance required to burnish a large case, and its mouldings, vigorously enough and long enough to actually make a difference. You knocked a little grunge and a little dust off some wood with shavings you picked up off the floor and that was about it and thought you had actually accomplished something. The surface looked a little brighter because it no longer had any dust on it, fingerprints, general shop grunge, etc. There's nothing wrong with this, of course, but you did not leave behind burnished material. You simply used shavings instead of a clean cloth or a tack cloth. We've all done this. It is not burnishing wood.

 

[Bm101]

don't remove the backlash from the adjuster, it's there for a reason, it means the mating face is the only one in contact (and it should always be on the advancing face) to stop the adjusted backing out. It was quite a clever little design really.

That's a very handy tip Novocaine. It makes perfect sense when pointed out. Thanks for sharing, much appreciated.

 

[ED65]

Smoother shavings. It's not hard (they're always right in front of you or on the floor), and though I haven't read it in a text, I can't imagine that it wasn't standard practice to make a surface uniform for finish.

It was indeed done traditionally. I was planning on posting just to mention this to CStanford.

It's hard to judge if it was standard practice from what I've read, but it was definitely done. Burlap and other coarse fabrics are also suggested for the purpose. But practical men tend to come up with similar practical solutions and as you say the shavings are always right there in abundance. In the days before commercial abrasives I'd be more surprised if it wasn't tried to be honest, given wood waste had a second life in other areas already.

It is not burnishing wood.

Burnished wood is not a single state. Naturally there's a spectrum from not burnished at all to as burnished as the wood can get and any amount of rubbing with something of a mild abrasive quality does something to burnish the surface.

You do of course have to rub hard and for quite a time to get to a fully burnished state, q.v. polissoir work, but I've used burnishing a lot over the years in various materials (many much harder than the majority of woods) and you don't have to rub hard or for very long for the process to start, even when the burnishing stuff used is significantly softer than the surface being worked. You can confirm this easily with nothing more than a scrap of denim on hickory, hornbeam, locust or any other very hard wood you have to hand.