Finishing Pear wood

[The Bitter End]

Good day to you all

 

I am looking for some advice on getting the most out of pear wood.

 

I am busy building a model shipways Uss Constitution and I would like to leave the hull unpainted. I have therefore decided to go with pear wood. The wood in question does not come from Standard swiss pear but rather from pear tress that I cut down on my farm(Early BC is the variety). This is a wood with an incredibly tight grain and a certain degree of beauty. I would like to know what the procedure would be to get a really nice even well protected and realistic finish on this wood.

 

I have attached an image of the partially completed stem in pear wood as a sample of what I am working with.

[davec]

I don't paint my models and have been really happy with minwax wipe-on poly.  It is easy to apply and clean up.  I haven't used it on traditional pear, but have on swiss pear, boxwood, cherry, and ebony, and have been happy with how it turned out.   I don't use it on holly as it gives a yellow tinge to the white color- I've been using minwax polycrylic over holly.

[Mike Y]

I experimented with various pear and boxwood finishes and settled on these three depending on your needs.

All three are easy to apply and are quite universal (would work for any shape of a part).

1) Tung Oil (pure one) if you want a deep, dark tone with a bit of sheen, making grain more visible. Beware - penetrates deep into the wood (a problem if you want to later glue another part to the finished part) and dries slowly. 

2) Danish Oil as a middle ground

3) Osmo Polyx 3062 wax-oil mixture as a new go-to finish, looks lighter than the rest and super easy to apply. 

 

I did some finish tests in my build log, hopefully you would find them useful  
See here: https://modelshipworld.com/topic/7297-beavers-prize-1777-by-mike-y-148-pof-hahn-style/?do=findComment&comment=788496

 

Edited November 23 by Mike Y

[tlevine]

I use Danish Oil for all of my models.  My Hannah was made from pear (not swiss pear).  It darkened the wood slightly but brought out the character of the grain.

[The Bitter End]

Thank you to all of you gentlemen,

 

I will do experiments with all of your suggestions and see what behaves the best on this particular wood.

 

Be good!

 

TBE

[paul ron]

also try spray clear semi gloss acrylic. krylon is my best choice. it will darken it and accent the beautiful grain. do some tests on scraps of all the different types of finishes.

 

 

 

 

Edited November 24 by paul ron

[vaddoc]

Pear wood and Tung oil work really great, brings out the beauty of the wood. Get the polymerised Tung oil version, cures much faster. 

 

Edited November 25 by vaddoc

[The Bitter End]

On 11/25/2024 at 8:14 PM, vaddoc said:

Pear wood and Tung oil work really great, brings out the beauty of the wood. Get the polymerised Tung oil version, cures much faster. 

 

I'll add this to the list. If you look at my constitution build one of my most recent posts is of a carving knife I banged together froma ball bearing and some of this pear wood with linseed oil, this did make me think that adding some more natural oils to the tests would be a good idea.