knob stuff

[Kneale Brownson]

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Nice looking project, Phil.  How are you threading the wood for the shifter
shaft?

At 11:31 PM 05/27/2002 -0400, Phil Rose wrote:

>Some time ago I mentioned my intention to make a zebrano gearshift
>knob (I've made a couple of knobs from other tropical woods). Well, I
>finally got around to Zebrano a few weeks ago. As I expected, the
>hardest part of the project is not the wood-turning, but rather the
>finishing to a good color, i.e., a color that will match the rest of
>the car's trim. The "raw" Zebrano wood has a dramatic, dark-striped
>grain, but is otherwise a rather bland, pale beige color. The rich
>reddish-brown trim in our Audis was obtained either by dyeing the
>zebrano or by applying a dyed finish. It's not likely that a
>conventional pigmented stain was used, since that would not be able
>to give such a uniform look to a wood that is so "open-grained" as
>Zebrano.
>
>I had hoped I might get close to the Audi color by using orange
>shellac, so I applied countless thin coats. Though this caused the
>knob developed a nice warm, light honey/amber color, it got nowhere
>close to the hue that I wanted. So there's still work to be done
>before I'm satisfied--probably will need to apply a dye (or two). The
>photograph in the link below shows my zebrano knob after the shellac
>finish, and the inset at the lower right is a Photoshop rendition of
>the color I would like to get.
>
>http://frontiernet.net/~pjrose/zebrano_knob2.jpg
>
>Phil
>--
>
>Phil Rose                               Rochester, NY USA
>'91 200q        (130 Kmiles, Lago blue)
>'91 200q   (57 Kmiles, Tornado red)
>         mailto:pjrose at frontiernet.net
>
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>
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