I am finishing up a large hunting knife and have chosen purple heart for the handle with a brass bolster. My question is does anyone have any advice on finishing purple heart to get the best color out of it? I have the handle and the bolster on and pinned and epoxied and sanded to basic shape but I did not want to go further until I got some advice as I have not worked with this wood before.

Thanks in advance

The best way to get the color is to sand it to a nice fine grit like 320, steel wool it and leave it alone. The color is the result of oxidation, so any finish will inhibit the color. It can take a few weeks for the color to show up well. I have heard some suggest you can warm up the wood to speed up the process but it never worked well for me.

Leaving it in the sun will bleach the sunny side!

Thanks, I am hand sanding the handle to 400, so after that I will leave it bare and let it sit.

I remember Mike Conner saying once that putting it in the window where the sun hits it will bring out the color faster.

Would heating it a very low heat in an oven (say 100 degrees) for a while produce the same effect or is it the light and not the heat the does the working?

I've heard Jerry Hossom say to put it under a strong fluorescent light. The UV supposedly speeds up the process.

Steve

Sweet, that's easy enough.

Thanks

One more question,

Will leaving it under fluorescent lights bleach it out at as stated above about leaving it in sunlight?

If you can get an even exposure it might work.

I had a piece on a window sill once for a month or two and the side facing the window and the bottom were much lighter than the rest.

...or a shorter exposure to the sun could help... ?

Thanks J

I've had the opposite experience! When I work with purpleheart, light tends to brown it out. To keep the color, I sand it to 600, then use danish oil or tung oil to seal it. It seems more colorful and purple when freshly sanded.

I had a piece on a window sill once for a month or two and the side facing the window and the bottom were much lighter than the rest.

Jon, was it still pretty on the lighter side?

If so, might you get an interesting graduation if you controlled the exposure? maybe?

I've heard so many conflicting things about Purpleheart sometime I wonder if it doesn't vary widely by quality...

...or perhaps an oil finish still allows enough oxygen to get to the wood. A woodworker friend of mine advised against finishes, but may have meant varnish. I'll ask him.

I did get quite a striking color difference from the spot that was directly in the sun to the spot that was on the bottom to all the others. The one on the bottom was the dullest, the sunny side next and the rest was the most purple... you could manipulate it, but at some point I think it would even out.

Guess I'll have to try leaving some in the sun!

Maybe you could try hanging it and let it spin around in the sun?

Just a thought.

Bob Sigmon

Well, heres what I have done. I left the handle without anything on it for about 4 days in my kitchen under the big flourescent lights, I then threw it in the oven for about 4 hours at 100 degrees with another knife that I had baking (I sometimes do this after attaching handles in order to speed up the curing process for the epoxy), then I finished it with a light coat of tonge oil and buffed it out a bit, nice color and nice shiny clean finish after the oil. Thanks for all the help. I will post pics of this one when I have the time to get to the studio and take shots.

By the way, the blade is forged from d2 stock, left with a rustic finish on the top half of the blade with only the blade grinds being polished, the bolster is brass with filework along the front edge and it comes down around the index finger from the front of the handle, 8 brass pins in the handle. Will post pics sometime soon. Thanks all

Heres a link to some shots of this (almost) finished piece.
display case (http://www.ckdforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=10047)

JL,

Here's a thought that might be interesting to try. Try placing a scape of it close to where you (or a friend) is stick welding. The UV from the welder is much more intense than sunlight. That should tell you what UV will do to the color. Or even better, if you know anyone that works with recording dat tapes they should have a UV oven for erasing the tape that will bombard it with more UV rays than anything else.

Gary