Burning wood fail

[jmkratt]

Well after countless test runs without issue I finally burned and stained my Explorer. Everything looked great until I applied my Danish oil blend. I am assuming the heat from the wood burning sealed the wood as the oil didn’t penetrate and I didn’t sand well enough prior to oil. I must have generated more heat than I did on any of my practice runs? 

I am learning a lot on this project!

Any recommendations on how to fix? I have another design on the body that’s even worse. I don’t think I have a choice but to let the oil dry, sand everything back and start over hoping enough of the burned wood design stays without the surrounding wood….am I on the right track? 
 

Thanks! 

[Bizman62]

Do you mean the lighter area around the letters? To me that looks like intentional, emphasizing the text. It also resembles a decal, they often show a similar surrounding. If that really bugs you, sanding and reoiling is the only way. Good thing with oiling is that you don't have to do the entire area as the patch will blend - if the oil is of natural colour, that is. For a tinted oil sanding to the nearest edge should hide any differences in shade.

You're right about heat sealing wood. Heat treated/torrefied/roasted wood is water repellent to an extent. Back in the day they used to char the underground ends of fence posts to prevent rotting. They once told me in a torrefying plant that optimal heat treating is quite delicate as too roasted gets ultimately brittle and too little heat is just kiln dried. As the letters are charred, I'd suppose that the surroundings are "optimally roasted" for durability. But the rest is just normally dried. That said, you may not be able to sand that away, at least not totally.

[jmkratt]

Thanks for the help. 

Yeah I didn't explain myself well. I did not intend for the lighter color around the burn at all. 

Well at least I learned something! I am going to try and sand back the head stock and front of the body. Problem is I burned the edges with a heat gun too for a burn fade look. I don't want to do that again with the back and sides done so I will get some more stain and try and sand back blend it.