General woodworking question: sanding end grain

[darren]

I'm finishing up a maple neck with rosewood headplate and having a heck of a time with the end grain of the headstock. It looks decent until you wet it with some naptha, and then it looks horrible. See for yourself - this is sanded to 220, left side wetted, obviously.



It actually looks much worse in person... problem areas are at the headstock end and the point of the heel which is facing directly away from the body, where it is all endgrain as well. the rest of the neck looks great. I'm not convinced it's rosewood dust because the issue is in the heel as well and there's no rosewood close to that. The rest of the neck is very smooth and clean. Is anything going to clean this out of the pores or should I just keep on sanding?

maybe it's just the nature of this wood but I'm hoping not. thanks for any help you can give.

[Kevin Sjostrand]

End grain will amost always look darker under finish so perhaps that is what you are getting, just that it is darker. If you sand all the visible scratches out I don't know what else you could do. It doesn't look to me there is darker dust in the endgrain.

Kevin

[darren]

Thanks Kevin,
I think I will keep on sanding and we'll see what happens. It's such an abrupt color/texture change from the side of the headstock to the end, I'm having a hard time with it visually.

[Ben-Had]

Would a couple light passes of a block plane clean it up?

[darren]

Might be an idea... I think at this point I'd be afraid of blowing out either the top or back headplates. That'd be pretty gutsy. :) I have tried light scraping with no better results.

[RnB]

I would try taking the surface up through all the grits, to finest you have, to where you have almost a polished look to the wood & see what that yields. Might take away some of the splotchiness you are seeing...?

[Ben-Had]

Might be an idea... I think at this point I'd be afraid of blowing out either the top or back headplates. That'd be pretty gutsy. :) I have tried light scraping with no better results.

I know what you mean. And I wouldn't want the material taken off to be much thicker than a scraper anyway.

[Tarhead]

if you think of the end grain as the end of a bunch of capillary tubes and the face grain as the side of a bunch of them it makes sense that the end grain would absorb faster and deeper than the face grain. I go up pretty high in the grit on the end grain (p800-1000) and stop at a lower grit (p220-320) on the face grain. This burnishes the end grain and slows down the absorption of the finish.

You can also seal the end grain with a light coat of Shellac if the burnish method doesn't help.

[Valleyisle]

If you have a scrap piece of the cut where you are able to try a stain just on the end grain edge and then coat it out seeing if that would agree with you. End grains tend to absorb more so opt to 'dab some turps' on the wood prior to staining and that will lessen the sudden change to a darker color, allowing you more control to match the sides. (Turps considering that you are using a oil base stain).
Hope this helps some.

[darren]

Thanks for all the input guys. I took it up to 600 and I'm gonna live with it. actually doesn't look too bad, this is 2 oil coats on the neck and 12 on the body. another week of this and I'll be ready for curing...