CRACKS!

I had some nasty tearout on one of the knots, so I cleaned the crack and the damaged section using my Mora whittling knife and a Mora spoon knife. Great tools!

Since this means that I will end up with a rather large blob of black epoxy, I will put this piece at the back of the rack, where it will be covered in felt and thus invisible.

Filling epoxy in the knots

Time for some chemistry. I covered the bench in plastic, taped up the edges of the two knotty pieces and prepared some sticks for epoxy persuasion. The wood is suspended on spacer blocks so that I can monitor when the epoxy has seeped through without creating (too much of) a mess.

There’s not much epoxy pigment needed – two tiiiiny drops rendered the batch pitch black!

It is not easy to take pictures during this process; I do not want my phone to get any epoxy on it!

As you can see, the epoxy had seeped through the crack and dripped onto the paper towel I had the good mind to put down.

For the second piece, I flipped it over and saw that the epoxy had made its way through. Just as you can spot in the background, I taped over the area on the opposite side to keep the epoxy in place, then filled the void with epoxy.

Since I cannot guesstimate the amount of epoxy needed, I – yet again – ended up with way too much. But lucky me, I had just the piece of wood for such an occasion – a big, thick piece of white oak with a huge knot – and a big crack. I wanted to use that piece for some panels in a rail/stile type frame, so I used the excess epoxy on that. Hopefully, it’ll work out and I can get my panels from that piece. It is going to look stunning!

After the epoxy had cured, I tarted up the boards with a #4 smoother.

To the next page for some plowin’!