This seems like the best place to put this. If one of the Mods think it fits better somewhere else, please move it.
Byron sent me a couple small pieces of chrysanthemum vine to play with. It's interesting stuff. When I cut a couple 1/8" cookies off using my bandsaw, it felt harder than I expected. I sanded the cookies to remove saw blade marks and then sanded them to 220. They're much more solid than I expected - I thought the parts in-between the darker borders would be pithy or grainy. Not so. Certainly not as hard as the darker borders, but not so soft it needs stabilizing. Maybe on larger cookies it might, not sure. Finding the cookie to be as workable as it was, I decided to go ahead and inlay it into what I hope will become a panel in a box lid. I added a little of the saw dust to the epoxy to help mask the gaps. Because the outside of the cookie is live edge with lots of angles and bumps, it's really hard to get a primo fit.
Then I applied a single thin coat of wipe-on poly to see how the color changes. I just inverted the can of poly onto a small section of rag and then rubbed it on. Not a heavy coat.
Darkens some but still nice contrast. Looking close I could see some tiny dents and stuff so I decided to fill those with thin CA glue and sand it with 220 while the glue was still wet. The idea being to fill in those tiny holes with dust and using the CA glue to lock it in place.
Worked out pretty well. Darkened the cookie a little more but can still see the contrast. Unfortunately the lighting was different in those two photos, the color depth isn't that different after the CA fill.
Byron sent me a couple small pieces of chrysanthemum vine to play with. It's interesting stuff. When I cut a couple 1/8" cookies off using my bandsaw, it felt harder than I expected. I sanded the cookies to remove saw blade marks and then sanded them to 220. They're much more solid than I expected - I thought the parts in-between the darker borders would be pithy or grainy. Not so. Certainly not as hard as the darker borders, but not so soft it needs stabilizing. Maybe on larger cookies it might, not sure. Finding the cookie to be as workable as it was, I decided to go ahead and inlay it into what I hope will become a panel in a box lid. I added a little of the saw dust to the epoxy to help mask the gaps. Because the outside of the cookie is live edge with lots of angles and bumps, it's really hard to get a primo fit.
Then I applied a single thin coat of wipe-on poly to see how the color changes. I just inverted the can of poly onto a small section of rag and then rubbed it on. Not a heavy coat.
Darkens some but still nice contrast. Looking close I could see some tiny dents and stuff so I decided to fill those with thin CA glue and sand it with 220 while the glue was still wet. The idea being to fill in those tiny holes with dust and using the CA glue to lock it in place.
Worked out pretty well. Darkened the cookie a little more but can still see the contrast. Unfortunately the lighting was different in those two photos, the color depth isn't that different after the CA fill.
