[fishcarver]

I love to carve natural finish fish as most of you know and i keep hearing the term "burnishing" and i don't know wheather i should try to avoid it or attempt to achieve it, just what is menat by "burnishing" and is it a good thing or not, i am going to start finishing with oils so does this have anything to do with anyhting, thanks....

[Kenny_S]

In a sense, it is polishing by rubbing the wood.
Some achive this by their very sharp knives which in a sense does burnished the wood or leaves a polished cut. You can take the wood handle of the knife and also achive the same results. A lot of the realling old carving were done this way.
Hope this helped.

[Irish]

Adding to Kenny's excellent definition ... the wood handle that you use for burnishing should be a harder wood then the one that you carved. So a butternut handle for basswood or a walnut handle for butternut.

Burnishing also will force many of the loose wood fibers down into position in the deep troughs of the v-gouge. Wood has a memory so you can 'press' the fibers where you want them to go and stay.

Susan

[fishcarver]

Thanks Ken and Susan, this helps, will oil still penetrate with all this pressing down of the fibers, sounds like it's a look i want to achieve, thanks again.........

[Irish]

My Dad would burnish pistol grips which were usually done in walnut. He would finish the grips with tung oil and they did wonderfully.

Now, the other thing he would do ... as he burnished he would occassionally stop and rub the grips along the side of his nose or chin, picking up an extremely light coat of skin oil. He said it made the burnish brighter.

I know skin oil sounds odd but I will add here that when I did sign painting using sign enamels I would do the same thing for small clean ups. You can rub your finger along the side of your nose, pick up just the smallest amount of oil and use that to cleanly wipe away a mistake. Nothing, not mineral spirits or lacquer thinner, did an easier or cleaner job.

Susan

[Hi_Ho_Sliver]

Thats how you polish a briar pipe, rub it on the side of your nose....but not when its lit!

[DiamondWillow]

Don't rub it along the side of your nose if it is running either

[Kenny_S]

Oh boy, I gots tons of that stuff this week. Runny nose that is.YUCK!

[Irish]

Dave, I had forgotten that. When I read your posting in my email inbox I had this wonderful memory of my Dad settled into his overstuffed chair getting his pipe ready to fire up for the evening.

Thank you for sparking that memory.

Susan

[Donna_T]

The burnishing process creates a luster that just can't be duplicated. Another way to add luster to a carving that is finished either in a natural finish or a painted one it to rub it with a wadded up piece of brown paper bag. While real burnishing involves rubbing with a harder piece of wood (walnut is what I've used), and the brown bag doesn't press the fibers down as deeply as the wood method, it does press down the surface layer for a great look.

On a small carving, I might spend 10-15 minutes rubbing it with the brown bag. I've even cut little squares of brown bag and put them on a mandrel (just like I do with Scotchbrite) in a power carver and run it over a carving on low speed for a similar effect.

Just another alternative....

Donna T