Merit Oak Six — Burn-In Stick Set
Ships from Waynesboro, Virginia.
Six full-size Merit burn-in sticks · five colors · the oak range, honey to near-black
The Oak Six is a set of six full-size Merit burn-in sticks for repairing chips, gouges and worn edges in oak — golden and medium oak through dark English and fumed finishes. It is the box for a shop that sees more oak than anything else: mission and Arts and Crafts pieces, quartersawn tabletops, and the millwork in older public buildings.
Oak is a demanding repair because the grain is so open and the color shifts so much across a single board; a fill that matches the flat grain can still read wrong against the ray fleck. This set leans on the medium oak, doubled because it is the one that gets used on most jobs, with a semi-transparent oak for fills where the figure needs to show through, two dark oaks for fumed and English work, and a honey-amber transparent to pull a leveled repair into the surrounding finish. Original factory stock, hand-poured and stamp-embossed, every stick cast one at a time.
What's in the set
Listed light to dark:
- #550 — Transparent Oak Honey Amber
- #82 — Dark Oak
- #49 — Oak Semi-Transparent
- #36 — Oak (×2)
- #78 — Dark English Traditional Oak
Five colors, six sticks — Oak doubled.
What a burn-in stick does
A burn-in stick fills chips, gouges, and worn edges with hard natural resin that takes a finish like the wood around it. Melt a little off the stick with a heated knife, flow it into the damage, level it, and finish over it — the same repair the trade has been doing this way for generations.
Why a range
A burn-in has to disappear into the finish around it, and color is what gives it away. The usual method is to pick the stick closest to the surrounding wood — often deliberately a shade lighter, since it is easier to bring color up over a level fill than to take it back out — then work the tone and grain on top once it sits flush.
Oak runs from pale honey to nearly black depending on the cut, the age and whether it was fumed or stained, so one oak stick is seldom enough. This set covers that run with the body colors at one end of the row and the see-through sticks at the other.
Expect a little surface character — pour marks, the odd bubble, an embossed number that stamped a hair off-center. They melt exactly the same.
See this set in the Merit color line →
Where the burn-in stick comes from: Penny a Stick: a brief history of burn-in sticks. More from the line: the Merit hub. Questions: orders@shellac.net.
