Redwood pore filling?

Do you need to do any pore filling on curly redwood for a mirror finish? I know CA is a bad idea on it but if you need to pore fill redwood what do you like to use?

no need to pore fill soft wood tops,

having said that, i sometimes ca tops

If you don't have any dips and dos around the rosette, at the purfling, at the binding and a perfect piece of redwood then you don't need to. That's a lot of ifs. I usually pore fill.

Beau Hannam Ukuleles said:

no need to pore fill soft wood tops,

having said that, i sometimes ca tops

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is a wash coat of shellac enough to keep the ca from wicking into the redwood?

A wash coat or two should be enough.
End grain is the only place you have to worry about with ca staining softwoods.

Shellac the rosette channel, before titebonding/hide gluing the rosette in although the titebond/hide glue also acts as a sealer.
Don't use ca at all on rosettes in softwoods (hardwoods like koa, mahogany etc is fine though). Waterbased glues (titebond/hide glue) are far better as they slightly swell the wood channel for a better fit.

I "grain filled" this redwood top with thin ca- those curly can be a bit unstable- warning- curly redwood soaks up the ca very quick.

Beau Hannam Ukuleles said:

- warning- curly redwood soaks up the ca very quick.

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Redwood reminds me of a weird sponge sometimes. In some ways worse than spruce because it will take CA up an end grain pore and transmit it 3 inches away. I live with redwood all around me and I understand this wood. We get a monsoon season of 6 months followed by hardly any rain at all for 6 months. So when it rains, those trees just suck it up as quick as possible. They are huge, 250 tall foot sponges.

Beau's method of gluing is the safe way to go with the added benefit of swelling. I however still use CA with rosettes on redwood because I'm using shell with plastic purfling and I worry about adhesion. CA works for me just fine but I understand I'm playing with fire. Your shellacing to seal the channel has to be absolutely perfect. I use a no less than 3 washes of shellac with 2 coats of cut shellac and a final 1:1 coat. Being very careful that I didn't miss anything. Miss just one stinking pore and it will run on you. So, Beau knows. Don't go there if you don't have to.

Getting back to the original post, I don't pore fill redwood and have gotten great results. Don't think a pore filler is even needed on redwood as there are no pores.

ive titebonded paua rosette in for 10 years without adhesion probs. I didn't use plastic purfling though.