Waterfall Bubinga

Dan Mooney

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Portland, Oregon
I was at our local Woodcrafters last week, (not to be confused with Woodcraft, that's on the other side of town)

I saw this piece of Waterfall Bubinga.

I was back in the area today thought I'd get a picture or 2, good thing I did judging by the sold sign.

It's about 16' long, 4' wide at the bottom, and about 3' at the top, 4/4 thick

What a beautiful piece of wood.
 

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You can get that effect with waterfall bubinga veneer. There's no reason to buy a log of that stuff - the wood under the surface is not contributing to the appearance.

Here's a 16 segment sunburst table I did a while back in waterfall bubinga. Bubinga is hard to deal with because it's rotary cut - so when it gets wet, it expands. To lay a sunburst like this, you have to use a non-water based glue. [Note: in the picture, it looks like some of the segments are lighter than others. That's a trick of the light. All the segments are the same color and none are darker than others. If you walked around the table, the "lighter" segments would change as you moved.]

And while curly bubinga veneer is not inexpensive, it's not close to what that board was marked.

Mike

[The second picture is just a closeup of the center of the table to show the effect of the matched pieces of veneer. And just a note, you do not want to start learning veneer work with curly bubinga. I consider it an advanced material.]
 

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Great piece of wood, Dan, and beautiful table, Mike. :thumb:

thats about 4.66 bd.ft. that comes out to 782/ bd.ft. Thats some nice wood.

:huh:

Better sharpen the ol' pencil, Don. :D

192" length
42" average width
1" thickness

(192 x 42 x 1) / 144 = 56 board feet = $65.18 per bf
 
Great piece of wood, Dan, and beautiful table, Mike. :thumb:



:huh:

Better sharpen the ol' pencil, Don. :D

192" length
42" average width
1" thickness

(192 x 42 x 1) / 144 = 56 board feet = $65.18 per bf

Still better than 30 bucks cheaper a BF than the stuff Rennie bought last week.:thumb:
 
Beautiful table, Mike! That must have taken a great deal of work to get all of the slices cut absolutely correctly and then put together perfectly. What did you use for a finish on the table, if you don't mind?

What a great slab of wf bubinga! I can't even imagine spending that much money on a piece of wood, regardless of how beautiful it was. I'd never make anything out of it because I'd be too afraid to screw a piece up; I'd just hang it in my living room and look at it!

Jim
 
It's not that hard to cut the wedges for a sunburst - you cut all of them at one time and use a template. It's important to be careful and accurate in your work but that's about it.

The table is finished in lacquer and then rubbed out with rubbing compound. The rubbing removes any orange peel that might occur if the lacquer doesn't flow out well.

Curly bubinga is difficult to lay because it expands when wet - so I used a non-water based glue when I laid it.

Mike
 
That table is absolutely amazing. I can't tell you how pleased I am to see the wood being displayed, as I've bought 9 sheets of the veneer (900mm x 2500mm) and my uncle Phil has helped me to press them onto 1.4" birch ply, to form the infill panels of my office.

I have been calling the waterfall bubinga Kevazingo, so I'll use this or KV as it's a bit shorter to type!

I'd be really interested if you could go into a little more detail on achieving the finish you have, as it looks beautiful, deep and really lustrous.

I'd also be interested in what wood you were pairing it with, and whether you used any stain or dye to get them to blend / match it. I am going to be using a Sapele blockboard to frame panels of the Kevazingo. I'm guessing that I don't want to apply any colour to the KV; but the grain of the Sapele doesn't match the KV and I'm wondering if I should dye / stain / do something to it, to make the two work well together.

What lacquer did you use? A button shellac or a ruby/red shellac? Is that a full french polish? Apologies for my ignorance, I'm a bit of a noob trying to do things that are a bit above him!
 
Gavin, shellac is a different material than lacquer. French polishing is done with shellac, but lacquer can be treated (rubbed out) with very fine abrasives (various polishing compounds) after it has cured to bring out a very high gloss.
 
That table is absolutely amazing. I can't tell you how pleased I am to see the wood being displayed, as I've bought 9 sheets of the veneer (900mm x 2500mm) and my uncle Phil has helped me to press them onto 1.4" birch ply, to form the infill panels of my office.

I have been calling the waterfall bubinga Kevazingo, so I'll use this or KV as it's a bit shorter to type!

I'd be really interested if you could go into a little more detail on achieving the finish you have, as it looks beautiful, deep and really lustrous.

I'd also be interested in what wood you were pairing it with, and whether you used any stain or dye to get them to blend / match it. I am going to be using a Sapele blockboard to frame panels of the Kevazingo. I'm guessing that I don't want to apply any colour to the KV; but the grain of the Sapele doesn't match the KV and I'm wondering if I should dye / stain / do something to it, to make the two work well together.

What lacquer did you use? A button shellac or a ruby/red shellac? Is that a full french polish? Apologies for my ignorance, I'm a bit of a noob trying to do things that are a bit above him!
Gavin left me a message asking me to respond to him in this thread.

I'm sorry, Gavin, I didn't understand that your posting was for me. The table is finished with lacquer, and I believe I shot dewaxed shellac as a sanding sealer before putting on the lacquer. The table is then rubbed out with polishing compound. You can use the white polishing compound made for cars (you can buy it at any auto parts store).

Mike
 
Oh thanks Mike! That is absolutely immense. So when you say Lacquer... just to confirm, it was a sprayed on finish, building up with clear lacquer in several layers then rubbing down with rubbing compound?

Was there any colour dye or stain applied to the wood, or does the grain just darken down with the clear lacquer?

Sorry for the bumb questions, just new to this!

Very best,

Gavin
 
Bubinga is pretty colorful all by itself so I didn't put any stain on it. I used water based lacquer so I put a base of dewaxed shellac on first. Water based lacquer is very clear and looks almost white when applied by itself. The dewaxed shellac gives a bit of an orange tint to the wood. I've also used an oil based wipe on finish, such as MinWax wipe on poly, as a base coat to give the orange tint before applying water based lacquer.

I put at least three coats of lacquer (sprayed) and it could have been one or two more. I lightly sand with a very fine sandpaper between coats. If you have a very clean environment you can skip the sanding but I always get some dust on the finish so the fine sanding gets rid of the nibs before the next coat goes on.

Finishing is not one of my strong points but the above is fairly easy to do.

Good luck on your project.

Mike
 
Fantastic board. I don't know if it is worth the asking price but somebody paid it. And, if bought by a business that can use and make a profit on resale of finished product, it is worth every penny.
Mike, please explain: "rotary cut" Do you mean with an old fashioned round saw mill blade as opposed to a bandmill?
And, you "shot" the finish. :huh:
And, no question, your table tops are stunning.:thumb:
 
Fantastic board. I don't know if it is worth the asking price but somebody paid it. And, if bought by a business that can use and make a profit on resale of finished product, it is worth every penny.
Mike, please explain: "rotary cut" Do you mean with an old fashioned round saw mill blade as opposed to a bandmill?
And, you "shot" the finish. :huh:
And, no question, your table tops are stunning.:thumb:
Rotary cut is a way of cutting veneer. Veneer is actually sliced with a big knife so that no wood is wasted. You can cut the veneer just like regular wood: Face cut, Riff cut, or Quarter sawn.

But veneer gives you one more option. Instead of moving the log up and down against the knife, you can rotate the log against the knife so that you peel a continuous slice. The laminates in ordinary plywood are done that way and that's why the figure in plywood doesn't look very good.

But some wood, such as birds eye maple and bubinga, are rotary cut because that brings out the figure - if you cut them any other way you wouldn't get the figure.

Regarding shooting a finish: When you spray, you use a spray gun so the slang term for spraying a finish is "shooting a finish". Sorry for using slang, I thought that was fairly well known.

Mike
 
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