In the past two years I’ve worked on a series of dyed pepper mills with a high-level finish. These mills were inspired by Ted Sokolowski’s DVD “Brilliant Finishes”. The general approach is to pop the curl in a highly figured piece of wood with two dying steps. It is then given a piano finish with a water based polyurethane finish.
Two Step Wood Dying
Start by taking a highly figured mill to a final sanding level of 400-600 grit. The mills were then first dyed with a water based black color. The dye is applied pretty heavily to achieve a uniform color coverage and then allowed to dry overnight. It is then sanded down with 180-220 grit paper to take off the more lightly dyed areas leaving the heavily dyed parts of the curl still pretty black. The mill is then sanded up to 600 grit. Now its dyed with the secondary color. In this case I created a custom color blend I call “Chianti” as it resembles the color of that wine. The mill is again dyed quite heavily to achieve an uniform color and allowed to dry overnight.
The water based dyes have raised the grain a bit, and that is knocked back with a white abrasive pad. You need to be very careful here as the dye depth is quite shallow and you don’t want to sand through it. Just knock off most of the fuzzy grain. The mill is ready for it’s final finish, which is the most arduous part of doing these mills.
The Finish Process
The finishes I use are Crystalac Brite Tone water-based instrument finishes. The Crystalac Brite Tone finish has a high solids content that builds quickly. This is very clear and very tough once it’s cured. The first coat is a lighter coat of the Brite Tone Sanding Sealer. It’s allowed to dry but not sanded. So why apply a sealer and not sand it? First, the sealer is a light application that I use to ‘freeze’ the finish and keep it from bleeding. This sealer also has a slight amber tint that works well with this red mill or brown woods. I don’t use the sanding sealer for light woods (I’ll have a separate post on that).
The initial spray coat is followed by two to three coats of Brite Tone finish, applied once an hour. This is allowed to dry over night and sanded. The sanding at this point is the most critical part of the whole project. You want to begin to level out the finish but at the same time you CANNOT sand through the finish. The dye is very thin and if you sand through the finish you will almost certainly leave a undyed bald spot that is very difficult to fix. It’s better to sand too little than too much now. After the dust is taken off, I spray three more times with Brite Tone, allowing about an hour for each coat to dry. After drying and curing overnight, it is sanded down once again. If you are great with a spray gun and the grain is not very pronounced you might be done now. But if you are using curly maple you’ll probably need two more finish coats. For this finish you need an absolutely flat, grain free (no pores) finish. Two more light coats are applied, allowing the finish to flow out but keeping as light as possible. The next day you have a very shiny mill with just a few nubs. The mill will look pretty good, but between the inevitable dust nubs and the high gloss it’s not as attractive as it can be!
Finishing the Finish
I go through a series of final sanding steps to take the mills to the next level. I start sanding lightly at 400-600 grit until all the nubs are off. The finish should be perfectly flat now. The mill is sanded up with paper using 800, 1000 and 1200 grit paper. It just takes about ten seconds on the lathe with each grit. Then I sand up with Micro Mesh pads, typically going up to 8000 grit. Once you are at this level the finish is close to glossy but not ‘plasticy’. It is a good balance between having a nice look and feel without being plain glossy. I’ll usually let this cure for a couple days and may then give it a light waxing.
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