Staining Wood

[Harvestman]

In my current glut of woodturning, I have an awful lot of ash, holly, birch, willow, and lime. All very nice woods, but rather pale. I got to wondering about staining them, but using natural products such as herb dyes (nettles, dyers greenweed, onions, walnuts, even fruit juice), as well as different oils (I have some red palm oil, and pumpkin oil gives greenish colour). I even though about using food colourings!

Assuming I can get the colour onto the wood, I'm hoping I won't have to worry too much about permanence as I can seal the wood afterwards with a coat of wax or lacquer.

Any thoughts? Anyone done this at all? I'm going to try it anyway, just wondered.

 

[lannyman8]

no mate not tried it yet, but have the same idea for when i do leather, try soaking some horse chestnuts husks in vodka or water for a deep brown, it will take some time for a very deep colour to be drawn from the husks...

your best bet is to ask Toddy who does allot of this and has a world of info on all sorts of things, she will also be able to tell you if you need a mordent to set the dye...

hope this helps mate.

regards.

chris.

 

[JJJ]

Strangely I have spent a lot of time trying to find a finish to keep these woods pale. One of the best ways to darken them is to leave them exposed to sunlight and let them dry. You might not be able to see them darken but when you wet them, you will get an idea of how much have darkened. Oils like Rustins Danish or Liberon Tung oil will darken them further, if you soak the item in the oil for an hour or so.

The Tung oil has the disadvantage in that it will reduce the contrast of the timber, but I like it as a food safe finish. It penetrates very deeply with out having to thin it with something nasty. I often use it inside a cup or bowl, but with a prettier finish on the outside. All woods vary a lot , my guess is that waiting like this would be most effective with firstly Birch, then Willow, Ash or Lime and least of all Holly.

If you soak an item then wipe of all of the excess, you will have a matt or satin finish. For a gloss just keep wiping on thin coats. You will then also have a finish with greater depth. ( Have you used Osmo products)



The next obvious choice would be either staining the wood with a spirit based stain such as the Colron range, or adding them to your oil finish. Whether that's Danish, Tung , Finishing oil, Linseed or Walnut. Liberon Finishing oil is great, especially if you don't want to darken the wood, but it takes a long time for its unnatural smell to go. With these stains you can mix them to get the colour you want.



One of the old traditional, natural dyes, is still used by gunsmiths . Alkanet root dye is blended with Linseed oil then applied in numerous coats.

You spot a £100 000 rifle with Turkish Walnut root stock and this could be the finish.



This is a great question and I am looking forward to hearing some answers that use natural dyes. We use Beetroot for Gypsy flowers and know many to dye wool or cotton
My main concern with these with wood ,would be mould or a bloom coming through.



I look forward to seeing your results

John

 

[Teepee]

Great thread!
I'm looking forward to seeing what plant extracts are used for permanent wood staining.

As a Decorator, I use all the proprietary stains, oils, varnishes and earth pigments on a regular basis and my knowledge stops with what comes out of a container!

 

[Toddy]

I'm sort of surprised that the woodturners haven't chipped in on this thread.....but, what comes to mind that I know of, are these.

Iron. Just iron, as in steel wool rusted down with vinegar, and it will stain the wood. If it's oak it'll make it black and if you thicken the liquor up with some gum arabic (sold for making icing flowers if you can't find it otherwise) you'll make an old fashioned ink....add some ground up oak galls and some red wine and it'll really be ink.....ink that can be drawn or painted onto your pale woods to create designs, or to stain in their entirety.

Pale woods will darken in light anyway, but red and yellow can be done using either madder or alkanet (see jjj's post above) or kermes or cochineal for the red. There are lichens that stain red/rust too, but finding them, and many are under threat, isn't so easy.
Yellow is easily done from onion skins, but that will fade in time; best to use something like the buckthorn bark and maybe alum for that.

None of these dyes are toxic incidentally, though the iron rich liquor should 'not' be drunk.

Green........well copper in solution will give that, but copper in concentration isn't good for us. Sometimes it comes out a very pale sort of aqua shade. Copper pipe offcuts in vinegar will give a pale colour, in ammonia will give an inky blue, but won't 'fix' to that colour easily.

Indigo will dye almost anything organic a rich blue.............that includes you, the walls, the floor

Be interesting to see what you come up with

cheers,
Toddy

 

[robin wood]

The first question is a result of British perception that light woods are somehow not as desirable as dark brown woods. I tried hard to fight that perception for many years and also experimented with the Swedish technique of painting the outside with natural earth pigment home made paint to contrast with the pale interior. This was all to no avail, people liked my experiments and agreed with my discussions about the benefits of sycamore and birch, then they bought the dark woods. Solution? Most food based dyes are not stable and fade when exposed to sunlight even things that give very strong dye initially like beetroot and turmeric fade over a couple of weeks. Coffee gives a nice natural brown which is colour fast but needs a lot of very strong filter coffee to do the job. I do have a solution now found after many years experimenting, easily available, very cheap I have shared it with a few friends but not sure whether I should be throwing it out for free to the woodworking world at large......

Oh go on then but remember where you heard it first...... gravy browning. There 75p from your local co op, pure E120 or caramel (burnt onions) does a perfect job, mix with a bit of water and dip your work. Some woods take stain better than others, sycamore, holly, willow and lime are perfect, birch and ash will take it into the end grain but not the tangential surface so it looks a bit odd.

 

[JJJ]

Nice post Toddy, I had forgotten some of those, but they triggered a few. Of course there is shellac, a foreign natural product that goes back centuries and is known as French Polish. Google if you dare, but if you like Smarties or M&Ms you might not want too. Too achieve a fantastic reclaimed fake Ebony finish, Dissolve some shattered 78 rpm records in meths.

 

[Harvestman]

Thanks Toddy, thanks Robin.

The idea is more to play around than anything else. Personally I have no problem with pale woods - I think they look great, but some of my feedback has been for "a bit more variety". Well anyway, I have enough wood to be messing about with, so thought I would try some stuff, see if it works, see if I like it.

Some great suggestions on here. I'll have to get into the shed now...

Thanks all.