waxy wood help

[kazant]

hello all. in the process of making a clock and recycling some old table legs cut and glued the planks together and cutting out on the scrollsaw. have noticed the wood feels really waxy, it is cutting ok but worried about whether it will take a finish any ideas what wood this could and suggestions for finishes would be appreciated, it has a nice grain and is a dark tan colour, it used to be a large garden table. recycled plenty of wood before but never had the waxy feel

 

[Racers]

Sounds like Teak to me, I usually finish teak with Danish oil, well I usually finish everything with Danish oil.

Pete

 

[kazant]

Sounds like Teak to me, I usually finish teak with Danish oil, well I usually finish everything with Danish oil.

Pete

thanks pete. to be honest only done couple small projects and also used danish oil on them

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Or iroko - that can be oily.

 

[NazNomad]

I'd have guessed Iroko as well.

 

[ED65]

Photos would help kazant! But even with photographs there's a lot of guesswork involved in identification of wood. While 'old garden table' does strongly suggest teak but there are a few look-alike woods from the tropics, similarly dense and oily. Iroko is one of them, it and teak can look virtually the same and they're nearly identical in density. Although iroko should be harder they're both in the very hard category so you'd be hard pressed to pick between them on that basis.

Anyway for finishing you have Danish oil and that's probably perfect for this, whatever the wood is. What they sell us as teak oil is nigh on the same thing as Danish oil and of course was purpose-made for finishing wood like this.

If you want to experiment with something new though you could try sanding the wood much finer than normal (P600 or higher) and then burnishing the surface, before using paste wax.