Finish Experiments: CA

As I’ve continued to learn how much little things can make a difference in razor scaling, I’ve noticed a wide variety of finishing techniques used by restorers and hobbyists. Most of these are promoted by someone or other as a near-miraculous, easy way to get that perfect finish on your scale…

…I set out to find out which, if any, this is true of. Tonight I wanted to put to the test the CA, cyanoacrylate, finish which is often touted as being simple, foolproof, and durable. In order to test this finish I prepared a quartersawn oak blank with four sections: One fresh from the jointer, and one each sanded to 150, 400, and 1000 grit. (Right to left, below.)

Once the surface was sanded it was tacked clean and the tape removed. I set up my finishing station with a nitrile glove, superglue, and my blank and rubbed enough superglue to saturate the pores of the wood into the blank.

I left the blank to dry, being careful not to force air onto it or allow moisture to contact the surface, as this would cloud the cyanoacrylate. When it had dried, however, I found a disturbingly ‘wooly’ surface waiting for me:

These fleecy-looking glue bits were anything but soft, however. With the understanding that this could be made a beautiful, smooth surface I attacked it with 800 grit sandpaper, my usual go-to for beginning the final finish on wood. The sandpaper was far more quickly abraded than the CA, and after 30 minutes I had a pile of 800-2000 grit sandpaper and very sore fingers… and this:

You can see a clear(er) spot on the far right, with the 1000-grit surface prep, but the whole thing is consistently messy. At this point in time my verdict is that if you own a buffer, this might (might) save time, although the glue is nasty to work with. If you only have hand tools, however, you will be far better served with a simple urethane or oil finish.

What baffles me is that this is nothing like the scales I’ve seen with a CA finish, which leads me to believe that I’ve either done something horribly wrong or that a buffer and fine polishing compounds are necessary to this process. I’ll happily take any suggestions!

For tonight, though, I’ll be using an oil finish. J