I see the countersinking of the screws, rounding the edges, breaking the edges, things you don't see in amateur work.
Between the time my dad retired from the Army and the time he went back into the Marine Corps, he taught me a lot of things about woodworking. He excelled as a finish carpenter before going into WWII. He started as an apprentice in the mid 1930's.
Most of the furniture in the family home was custom-built by him. To this day, I have the formal dining room table, china cabinet and 6 chairs, the Master bedroom suite and the guest room headboard and night tables. They are all solid wood, Walnut, Maple, Ash and Oak. This furniture will be around after the nuclear Apocalypse.
Love the grain in the spalted Maple. That can be polished up to a 1200 went-N-dry to look like polished glass
Your dad sounds like exactly the type I want to meet around here and mooch knowledge from.
My grandpa was like that too. He made chains, perfect uniform, symmetrical links, from a solid block of wood, and at the end, a perfectly spherical ball trapped in a cage. All from one piece of oak. He made several of them.
But he's been gone for 24 years and I have all of his tools and equipment.
That spalted maple is actually silver maple. It's a "soft hardwood". Strength and Janka hardness are comparable to pine. It's not hard maple, unfortunately. If it was, those logs would have been milled and stacked in one of the older barns by now.
My dog is licking the closet door right now. Weird..
Anyway I have achieved the polished glass look on osage orange (AKA hedge wood, hedgeapple, horseapple) wood.
I think it's the hardest wood & the 2nd strongest that grows in North America. (shagbark hickory being the strongest) and it weathers better than white oak. You could make a grave stone out of it and it'll still be legible in 100 years, although it'll lose its yellow color and turn a grayish brown.
Nothing useful, just a chunk I was playing with. I ran it on the belt sander with 80 grit, then 150 by hand, then finished with 400.
Maybe a woman or a white collar type of guy can feel the difference in the surface after sanding with 1200 grit like you said, but guys like us who work with our hands will have less sensitivity on our fingertips due to having a thicker layer of dead skin.
I'll try 1200 on something & see if Sarah can tell a difference. But to me, sanding a good dense hardwood like osage orange, or some of my black walnut with 400 makes it feel smooth as glass.
