Thanks for your comments Lee. As you will know, olivewood can vary enormously in regard to its absorbancy. In the main though, it is fairly hard and non-absorbent. If you are unsure about just how absorbent it is, after initial sanding with your coarsest grit, stop the lathe and brush on some dilute sanding sealer to see how much it soaks in. Wipe it off straight a way and see what you are left with. Of it soaks in completely, even only just in certain places, re-apply and wipe. Keep doing it until it no longer soaks in. If you have to stabilise in that way, you will also need to apply sealer between every grit. A lot of turners seal between grits as a matter of course anyway, which can only be beneficial.
Olivewood is quite oily though, so after you've burnishing with the shavings and before you apply your pre-melamine sealer, give the wood a thorough clean using meths on some clean tissue, both with the lathe running, and along the grain with the lathe stopped.
Having said all that, if you have a good, hard, dense non-absorbent piece in the lathe, it may well be a candidate for not applying a chemical finish at all. Just sand it to a fine grit, burnish with the shavings (don't clean it with meths) then buff to a shine, (LOL - you're allowed to buff in this instance), perhaps with a topcoat of microcrystalline or carnauba . Ultimately though, I'm afraid there is no substitute for experience when it comes to judging what route to go down.
Ideally you should be using the same shavings as the wood you are working, but theoretically, any shavings would do as long as they are not harder than the wood you are working, and as long as there is no risk of colour contamination, or contamination by other means, such as shavings from an oily wood being used on wood that is not oily. Shavings from a wood that is harder runs the risk if scratching the work - softer shavings will not yield quite so good a result, so try to use the same shavings as the wood you are working.
I keep a little plastic tub handy (in fact a food container from my local Indian Takeaway), in which I collect a reserve supply of shavings. Whenever you get some spare olivewood shavings gathering on the lathe, collect it up and keep it in your container, for the times when you don't have enough. I would much prefer to do that than use the stuff on the floor, or risk random shavings from other work that I'm not sure about.
Yes, it's crucial to always use dry tissue for burnishing.
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