Rose wood

Rosewood for furniture

rosewood finish

Rosewood is one of the very exotic wood species. This wood has a very strong grain characters with pattern that is very unique and interesting. It has black stripes on its grain that is never found in other types of wood. With light brown as his base color this wood is very much used to create furniture products with elegant and beautiful appearance. By choosing the right design and finishing then a beautiful furniture can be produced from this wood. Since that the Rosewood is known as an expensive wood. The source is relatively limited and its very attractive appearance makes its price to be expensive. Therefore, to make furniture the rosewood veneer is more widely used. The use of solid rosewood furniture as substrate for manufacture furniture is very rare. Solid rosewood may still use as raw material to make small item products, but for manufacture of furniture products which is need a more wide and big panels the veneer is much more economical.  

Rosewood veneer
 

The rosewood veneer is still considered as an expensive veneer, but of course it is still much cheaper than the solid rosewood. By the proper technique of gluing and arrangement the rosewood veneers can replace the use of heavy and expensive solid rosewoods.  But behind his beauty appearance the rosewood has special characters and requires special treatments in the process of manufacturing of this wood and veneer. The rosewood is a hard wood; its veneer is hard and brittle. It also contains a kind of oil that will interfere the adhesion between the veneers with its bare core in the gluing process. In a furniture manufacturing factory that uses rosewood veneer, there is often found many problems about veneering. If the process of gluing veneer is not proper then there are many problems occurs such as:cracking and bubbling veneer or other loose veneer.
To overcome these problems, the rosewood veneer needs a special handling in the gluing and pasting process. Some treatments are needed to eliminate the oil in this veneer and reduce the brittleness of this veneer. The oil in rosewood veneer should be washed first with a thinner or acetone before it glued and pasted. To reduce its brittleness the veneer should be softened first by using a veneer softener or veneer conditioner. The veneer softener is a special material that is design to soften the veneer. It mostly used to make the hard and brittle veneer such as crotch veneer, burl veneer and rosewood veneer to be softer and more elastic when it glued. 

The procedure of gluing the rosewood veneer is as follows: 

• A rosewood veneer sheets washed with acetone to remove the oil therein

The oil in the veneer need to be released. We can use a thinner or acetone to resolve and wash off the oil. Acetone is brushed or wiped on the veneer surfaces both sides evenly.  Let it for awhile to let the acetone evaporate and dry. Brushing or wiping  the acetone on the veneer is the best way to wash the oil inside, but a wetly spray the acetone on the veneer surfaces both sides is also resulted  quite good results.  

•  Apply the veneer conditioner to the surfaces

Brush or spray wet the veneer conditioner on the veneer surface (both side) and then lay down it  until it is dry enough. The veneer conditioner is a watery chemical, so when it applied it will wet the veneer and raise the moisture content of the veneer. It takes few hours to let the veneer dry to meet the standard moisture content (usually the standard moisture content for furniture products is about 10%). For a humid area, a warm room needs to place the veneer  until it obtain the standard moisture content. Warm room is a special room which is designed to keep warm and dry. This room is mostly build in the furniture manufacturer used to keep the dry wood, wood component and veneer to be stay in the standard moisture content. It needed especially in the moist area which has high humidity. In the high humidity area the moisture content of the dry wood will raise since it absorb the moisture from its humid environment.

•  Apply the glue and do the pasting veneer.

The veneer gluing is best done with a hot press with a special glue that is be fast hardened with a high temperature. With the hot temperature, the glue will dry in just few minutes to make a strong and stable attachment. The cold press can also be done but with longer processing time  with the appropriate type of glue. 

Finishing for rosewood.

The furniture made of rosewood veneer or solid wood of course needs an appropriate finish to produce interesting looked furniture product. A finishing with transparent is the best choice since it can display the beauty of the nice grain patterns its strong base color of this wood. A natural color or a light stain with a high gloss and clean looked is very suitable choice for this wood since it will produce an elegant, expensive and luxurious furniture. Contemporary models with simple shapes are the most widely design made of wood or rosewood veneer because it can display its strong and unique grain character. A complex furniture model can be too crowded and would be contrary with the strong grain pattern of the wood.
Finishing with antic models can also be done for this wood, if the antique looked furniture is needed. But the furniture model is usually kept in simple form style.
Rosewood has oil insides which will come out and interfere  the finishing  result Therefore a finishing with a solid color should be avoided. A solid wood color to this wood will also cover and kill the beauty appearance of the wood, so the solid color is not a proper finish for the rosewood.

Since it is a brittle wood, it has high risk to get veneer problem such as crack, or veneer lifting or other veneer problems. To reduce the occurrence of veneer cracking  we can do glue sizing on this veneer. Glue sizing is intended to close the wood pore and grain and make it more stable to avoid the veneer movement which will resulted in the cracked veneer.

  
 Personalized Rosewood stained piano finish Airflyte frame with black
brass engraving plate on brush gold metal background.