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My gut feeling is the lighter oils like Danish oil will soak right in and won't offer enough protection. A thicker one like osmo oil might work okay, although dent resistance may still be quite low. I'm not sure what Liberon finishing oil is like, but their products are generally high quality
The maple will come up great with most oils.
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Having a maple top will give you the opportunity to do a nice stain job, put a darker stain on first and lightly sand off to pop up the grain for max effect but sand lightly if its a veneer.
If I was doing it again now I would probably do the dye thing on the maple, then prime and spray can the back a dark colour then just do a spray can of clear over the lot.
As said Osmo does not afford much more protection than Tru Oil if any so it will show the dings. Also if I was spraying with cans I would not blow a lot of money on Nitro cans on wood like that just cheap and cheerful polyester clear coat unless nitro is really your thing.
Balsa is another example of a hardwood that isn't very hard
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We use various different types of Osmo oil.. What I have found is that in general the white oils work well on light wood but the dark oils can make the wood just look a bit dirty... Where as the dark oils on dark wood really makes them pop.
With Poplar I would probably advise above.. Spray it a dark colour and then some clear coat after..
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The Osmo raw stops the natural colour of the wood changing too much. Sometimes the finishing oil adds a golden (or orange/brown) tint to lighter colour woods, and I wanted to keep the maple as "raw" looking as possible.
The back was lightly stained with Crimson's black stain, prior to another couple of coats of their finishing oil.
I really prefer to be able to see and feel the natural wood under a finish (one of the reasons that I've never tried to developed any spraying skills), so I never bother with grain filling, etc (unless doing it for a contrast colour in the grain).
If you wanted a more solid colour on the back, you'd add a few more coats of stain to build up the colour,
I used car detailing tape to mask the front from the back, to make sure that the black stain didn't bleed into the natural top.
HTH?
Rub on a bit of coloured stain, rub on a bit of finishing oil, job done.
(OK, there's a bit of a knack to the rubbing-on bit, but "unless you start somewhere, you'll never get anywhere")
Unless this was a particularly expensive/valuable body blank, seems like it'd be a good place to start developing some new skills.
What's to lose??
It depends on your piece of wood (and yours is much more even in colour) but I do think poplar is more suited to a solid colour finish.
And as long as the maple cap is a thick cap and not a veneer you can always sand any finish off again if you dont like it.
Watch lots of youtube vids of other people doing it, it helps
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The top: I think I can manage with an oil finish (with or without prior staining).
So that would be a water based stain, then rub off and sand by hand to 400 grit right? Then start oiling...
The poplar back / base:
Apparently will not take stains well? (blotchy? unevenly?)
Do I apply a stain?
Or spray paint it with a rattle can?
I guess I should mask the top with newspaper, and apply masking tape to the edges / masking accurately the junction between the poplar 'base' and the maple 'top'
What paint do I use please? Something Opaque?
please bear in mind that I’m completely ignorant so don’t take any knowledge for granted please. please be clear and prescriptive, I shall just follow instructions, I do have a decent pair of hands, And could probably make a reasonable job of it.
and a black stain winds up giving you a chocolatey colour?
also, would that be crimson’s penetrating finishing oil, or the high build finishing oil? I think the latter is slightly thinner...