# Can I use laquer/varnish to finish stabilized wood?



## sigge (Oct 19, 2009)

Hi everyone

I am rather new to penturning but I was recently asked to make a pen for a freind of mine and we choose the wood together and he choose a stabilized buckeye burl

http://www.pennstateind.com/store/WXBG4-334.html

My question is can i use a varnish/laquer to finish this pen?

Anyone that has any experience with varnish and stabilized wood?


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## Greg O'Sherwood (Oct 19, 2009)

sigge,
I tried varnish on a stabilized blank before, but wasn't thrilled with the results as compared to just sanding/MM to 12000. IMO, stabilized wood usually doesn't need additional finishes. On the rare stabilized blank that wanted additional finishing, I've just done a couple CA coats.

Triple buffing them sometimes will give an extra pop, also.


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## PTownSubbie (Oct 22, 2009)

So, are you saying that you don't have to put a finish on stabilized wood?

I just purchased my first stabilized blanks and haven't turned any yet. 

Will a finish go on a stabilized blank the same as a non-stabilized blank? If so, why would you not finish it? Drawbacks?


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## sigge (Oct 25, 2009)

thanks greg... I will jsut try it out and see what happens


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## RussFairfield (Oct 25, 2009)

Stabilizing allows us to use wood that would otherwise be difficult to turn and finish without large quantities of CA glue to firm it up; but it is not without its problems. Finishing can be one of those problems, and we are often in one of those damned if you do and damned if you don't situations. 

Very few, if any, blanks are 100% saturated with the plastic. There will always be some amount of wood fiber exposed on most stabilized blanks. Some blanks are close enough to 100% saturation that it doesn't matter, and it can be treated as a plastic; but most of them aren't. This has nothing to do with who did the stabilizing, it is just the nature of the wood and the stabilization process. 

Any exposed wood fiber and the plastic behave differently to finishing, and they wear at different rates. Depending on the wood and the finish, this difference in absorbtion and wear will leave the exposed wood fiber on the finished pen either duller or shinier than the stabilizing plastic. These usually show up as lines in the surface, but they can also be quite large and visible. If the pen was finished as a plastic, and not given a coating of some kind, the wood will almost always wear to a duller gloss than the surrounding plastic. Whether either situation is of any consequence depends on the amount of wood fiber showing through the surface of the plastic, and whether there is enough of it to be seen. The bigger problem is that this difference in wear, and the amount of exposed wood fiber, is something that is often not visible until after the pen has had some wear. 

Something we can do is to polish the stabilized pen as though it were a plastic, and then get out the magnifying glass and look for lines of wood fiber in the surface. If there is any doubt about what to do, the safest thing would be to finish the pen as though it were a wood and hope for the best. 

Personally, I have had enough problems with finishing stabilized wood that I no longer use it unless there is something that is not available any other way.


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## GouletPens (Oct 28, 2009)

To play devil's advocate here, I say you should ALWAYS try to use stabilized woods whenever you can! The complete misnomer about stabilzed woods is that you don't have to put any finish on them, and that's totally bogus. I've never used a single stabilized wood that's polished 'just like an acrylic' and held its shine with any kind of use like a pen will get. Sure it will get shiny but so will unstabilized wood, until you start touching it every day. You should certainly finish stabilized woods. CA is the best way to do this. I would say lacquer dipping would be the next best thing, spray lacquer, wiping lacquer, or wipe on poly should also do the trick. Don't even bother with any kind of french polish, shellac, wax, or anything like that. It won't really hold to the 'plastic' in the wood and it'll rub off in a few days of handling anyway. Use some kind of film finish like CA, poly, or lacquer, and build very thick coats. I haven't noticed any real difference in using finishes on stabilized vs. unstabilized, then again I may be using different woods and finishes that some of you are. Still, CA won't fail.


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## sigge (Nov 2, 2009)

Great replies... Thanks for all the advice. I guess I have to do the trial and error approach and just see what suits me best. Thanks again!!!


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