I'm hoping there are some Hawaii guys on the forum - how do you seal Koa? I don't want to use an oil finish so some sort of film finish that will seal pores is needed. Something that can be applied HVLP.
Any suggestions?
Any suggestions?
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How do you seal KOA?
- Thread starter John Tisdale
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You could try emailing Kelly Dunn. If he doesn't know then he could point you to somebody who does. He is usually on WoW and probably doesn't check here regularly. I don't think that Ron Kent still does any woodturning.
Steve Worcester
Admin Emeritus
Koa in this respect is very similar to Mahogany or many of the medium pored woods. It will need some flooding on the end grain and not so much on the side grain. But outside of that you haven't given enough situational information.
John, Bill is right. I dont pop in here all that often.
My style of finish is a thinned down poly mix that goes into the wood pores to seal them yet leave the wood look like wood not a sheet of plastic. Koa tends to be two dips in the mix. first dip I wipe it dry after sitting on a drip rack for ten minutes then into my kiln overnight. Its gets power buffed the next day and dipped again. I have to be very watchful for bleeding from the wood pores and wipe them dry or I really regret the buffing the next day of all the super hard poly on the surface. anyway then a buff and Ren wax and that buffed and its ready to roll. I do admit your post seemed like a question about green rough out sealing from the title.
That said. My method has worked very well on usable bowls for many years. I used to use mineral oil on functional bowls. But they look terrible from first use on and wont take a refinish for anything. But a bowl with a varnish or poly base even if mineral oil is put on later still will look pretty darn good down the road.
That said, Jim Rinde uses epoxy for his finish. But he is an expert in epoxy and I am not.
My style of finish is a thinned down poly mix that goes into the wood pores to seal them yet leave the wood look like wood not a sheet of plastic. Koa tends to be two dips in the mix. first dip I wipe it dry after sitting on a drip rack for ten minutes then into my kiln overnight. Its gets power buffed the next day and dipped again. I have to be very watchful for bleeding from the wood pores and wipe them dry or I really regret the buffing the next day of all the super hard poly on the surface. anyway then a buff and Ren wax and that buffed and its ready to roll. I do admit your post seemed like a question about green rough out sealing from the title.
That said. My method has worked very well on usable bowls for many years. I used to use mineral oil on functional bowls. But they look terrible from first use on and wont take a refinish for anything. But a bowl with a varnish or poly base even if mineral oil is put on later still will look pretty darn good down the road.
That said, Jim Rinde uses epoxy for his finish. But he is an expert in epoxy and I am not.