I am not really a wood guy. When I lived in Ecuador (Quito), I had a house full of locally made guyacan furniture. I went to their shop and they gave me some good size chunks of word scrap, from which these grips were made. The guy who made the grips could not get any finish to work. I took them and did some research and it's seems that shellac was the solution. It worked well on the one pair I finished. I sanded off the oil puckered finish and applied about seven coats of No. 2 cut shellac. They look very nice.