What are your thoughts about the possible finishing of freshly inletted wood?
Assuming the inletting is precisely cut and wouldn't need any bedding compound to correct flaws, do you leave the wood as is or do you apply some sort of wood finish or epoxy?
Applying a penetrating stock finish should prevent the wood from drawing lubricating oils and the finish should greatly reduce water (-also vapor) penetration, too.
Some stockers propagate the use of epoxy (-bedding) over the whole inletting area for the same purpose with the added benefit of strengthening the wood and perfectly correcting any minor irregularities, thus giving 100% bearing surface.
There's no question in my experience regarding the superb bedding properties of epoxy. However, except on end-wood faces where penetration can be amazingly deep, depending on the product used and the particular wood, epoxies generally won't penetrate as deeply as stock finishes do but will adhere to the surface rather. Although there are so called penetrating epoxies available, experience and test reviews show that they basically won't penetrate substantially deeper than regular medium- to low viscosity products.
Just as an aside: The often propagated and quite popular thinning of epoxies with solvents like acetone etc. is normally not a good idea; other than negatively altering the strength- and ageing properties of the product, the thinning won't do much. It would be better to use a thin epoxy from the start or using the appropriate reactive thinner (= specific hardener) when using one of the system epoxies.
What's the opinion of you professionals?
