[jamis]

I recently carved my first love spoon, and have been applying a few coats of boiled linseed oil to finish it. Although it is bringing out the grain wonderfully and looks great over most of the spoon, the bowl endgrain in the bowl is causing me some grief. There is a horizontal "stripe", right across the middle of the bowl, that is not accepting the finish well at all. There is a similar (less-pronounced) stripe across the back of the bowl, too.

I've attached a couple of pictures (sorry for the low quality) that show the problem.

Has anyone encountered this before, or have any suggestions for "fixing" this? I'd hate for my first project (which turned out well, otherwise) to be marred by something like this!

[Eddy Smiles]

Great job of carving.... I'm not an expert but from my expereince differences like this are caused from differential sanding. The entire object has to be sanded exactly the same way with the same grit. On a clear finish like this you probably need to take it up in grits gradually making sure that the entire spoon is sanded evenly with each grit. If you get one part of the surface smoother than another then the stain or oil is going to take differently.

[jamis]

Ah-ha! Thank-you, Eddy. That is almost certainly what is going on, and has given me just the pointer I need to look up possible fixes. I did sand from 150 to 220 to 320, but I probably spent a bit too much time sanding that part of the bowl.

[AlArchie]

Looks to me like you came across a "ray".......a series of structural cells that run across the growth rings from the very center of the tree up to the bark. These cells function to transport nutrients across the growth rings.

Or it may be the result of improper sanding like Eddy said. Do a google on "wood rays" and you should be able to find some info on them.

Al

[Eddy Smiles]

Good point Al! I didn't see it but it's deffinitely another explanation. The trouble, as everyone knows, is that a lot of these imperfections don't come to light until the can of finish is opened! Bummer!

[mark yundt]

The others might very well be correct.I have noticed this though regularly on constantly curved surfaces,most recently ( and regularly) on a piece I turned on a lathe. What I believe this might be is a section of the wood where the grain is perfectly flat.It's not curving or being cut across one way or the other.If you notice the light section is completly around the bowl of the spoon. Rays wouldnt' be that perfect and the chance you cut it so perfectly for this to happen is slim. Especially when it happens regularly on lathe work.
Since this small area isn't showing any end grain,as the areas do on each side of this light area,,it doesn't accept stain as the areas that are gradually being exposed to end grain will,,they naturally show up darker as end grains will. This I think is a rather small area of relatively flat grain,,before the transition to the raduis occurs.
As I said ,,this happens regularly on my lathe jobs,,and you can see it as well on finished pieces such as table legs and such.The dense grain doesn't accept the stain,,where the sections with more and more end grain go dark.
Notice too that the light section you show,,goes straight through the concentric rings,,that is the flattest grain area..stain doesn't penetrate the same here.

[jamis]

Thanks all for your input. I tried sanding it a bit with 80 grit -> 150 -> 220, just to see if I could "open it up" at all, but it didn't seem to make any difference. For now, I've just decided to "bite the bullet" and live with it, though I'm not sure what lesson to take away from this (except, maybe, to try and sand more consistently and evenly, but if it what either Al or Mark said, that wouldn't really help me). Ah, well! Thanks again, all.

For anyone that's curious, I've attached a picture of the final product, with a couple coats of paste wax applied.