First Coat of Finish

The wolf head stick has been my focus for the last few days and last night I added the first coat of finish.  The finish i am using is a gun stock finish called Tru Oil.  I like the way the wood takes it up and i like that i can control the shine of the finish and the apparent "depth" of the wood by how many coats i apply and how i treat it after the finish is applied.  The fist coat of finish is really more of a sanding step than a finishing step though.  The first coat of finish shows me any places where the sanding is not quite done, it really brings out the marks, dimples and scratches.  It also tends to expand the wood fibers which brings up any remaining roughness in the wood.

So the next step is to re-sand any areas that show scratches or other imperfections and then lightly sand the entire thing to remove the fibers that have been raised by the finish.  After that, assuming i fixed every thing properly (and sometimes it takes 2-3 passes through this step to get all the imperfections out) then its on to adding all the coats of finish, in this case probably about 6.

My favorite thing about this step is i finally get to see what the grain and color of the wood are going to look like in the finished piece (though i usually cheat along the way and get it damp with water to give me a preview). Oh and one last thing that happens at this point,  if there is any painting to be done on the piece then that occurs between this step and final finishing.  The first coat of finish before painting seals the wood for the paint, an important step if you don't want the paint to bleed into areas you don't want paint. In the case of this stick the only painting will be the eyes.