Rich,

In your introduction you talked about re-doing the kitchen and making the face frames out of Blood wood. My questions is will the blood wood keep the red color or does it like some of the other exotics turn brown or darker with age?

The other question is what are you planning on using to finish the blood wood with?

I have a few pieces of it and had intended on using it for a table top, but was curious if it would stay the red color.

John,

I done a lot of research on finishing Blood-Wood. As always you get conflicting reports. Some say it will turn brown over time. However more say it will retain its' red color. I talked to a fellow named Jerry Work who is a well known pro woodworker that uses a lot of Blood-Wood in his projects. He says says it will keep it red color. He recommended using Target coating EM 2000 wvx which is a water born interior/exterior varnish. In the pasted I use a quite a bit of Fuhr's pre-cat lacquer (a water borne product).When using that product I would first seal the wood with Zinsser's seal coat. The Seal Coat is a 2 lbs cut shellac. So I asked Jerry If I should seal it with shellac before applying the EM 2000. He said, and I've read this in other places, do not use alcohol products on Blood-Wood on any woods containing a lot of resin because the alcohol will/can dissolve the resins leaving you with a muddy looking finish. He also said he doesn't' like an oil finish on Blood-wood.

He recommends for a seal coat cutting the EM 2000 50% with distilled water and then applying 3 coats of the EM straight from the can or maybe up to 10% water if thinning is needed for better atomization for your spray equipment.

All that being said and before I knew about not using alcohol products 3 years ago I sealed some Blood-Wood with shellac and after 3 years it's still holding it 's color. See picture below.

The first picture was taken about 3 years ago and the second picture was taken 10 minutes ago.

Wow that still looks good.

Some great information. I have wondered about it keeping the red color.

Where do you get Target EM 2000, I don't think I am familiar with it.

That is interesting about the shellac. The dna is gone so fast you wouldn't think it would do that. I usually spray shellac on and the coats are so fine.

I may have to experiment with some of it I have.

John,

Here's a link to "Target Coatings" http://www.targetcoatings.com/

You'll notice across the bottom of their page there are several place you can go. As you'll see there is a finishers forum devoted to their products. I think that would be a good place to start learning some about Target Coatings products. They also have a product EM 9000 which is a harder finish than the EM 2000 and may be a better choice for a table top.