Surfaces in woodwork

The most important aspect of wood art works (whether they be woodturned pieces, hand-carved or made with power tools), is how the beautiful texture of the wood is shown. Have a look at some photographs of my father's wood sculpture at www.nik-sergeev.com. When timber is moistened, it looks more interesting than dry timber, the darker areas of the texture look darker and more pronounced, and more subtle textures are revealed that were unnoticeable when the wood surface is dry (even if it was sanded to a high degree of smoothness). I don't know exactly the reason for this, but I suspect that the nature of propagation of light is responsible. Wood is an organic material, made, therefore, out of large protein molecules, which are diffusive. Water is made up of tiny molecules, so it must somehow fill the gaps of the large wood molecules. Still, this doesn't explain the reason for the change in colour.

The polishes, lacquers and oils that are applied to the surface of wood, are essentially substances that do what water does, in terms of colours and textures, but they do not dry. Another property of these substances is that they should be liquid, or at least easy to apply, but then they would change in a way that makes them not only resistant to evaporation, but also to transfer upon contact with other surfaces. So, it's something that changes chemically after it has been applied to wood.