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Does anyone know from experience how to get a nice straw or light brown color on tiger maple but still get that almost burnt look in the stripes? What dye and glaze combination would you use? Or do you have another way to get a really rich warm authentic 18th Century color on tiger maple? I always use shellac as my sealer and finish coat. Thank you.
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Replies
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Personally, I'd be scared to death to try dies and/or stains to achieve the effect you mentioned. You could ruin the look of the tiger maple. Whatever you do, try your technique (all steps) on a DECENT sized piece of the same stock. I carefully avoided the use of the word "scrap", as that usually implies too small a piece to get a decent "read" on how the finish will work.
I'd go Danish oil or Danish/tung oil blend finish and let nature work for you.
*I want to thank CStanford for taking the time to respond to my question. Unfortunately, the answer given is appropriate to another kind of finishing altogether and not the one I had in mind. The 18th century look I am refering to is, according to the literature and all the conversations I have had with finishing professionals, almost always achieved with a combination of water-based aniline dyes and solvent-based glazes such as Stulbs or Mohawk. (A few brave souls induce chemical reactions like those achieved with nitric acid to color the wood.) The look I am after is a golden straw look -- not yellowy -- but with stripes that have a dark, nearly burnt look. I have admired this color/finish on many, many reproductions but cannot quite figure out how to do it myself. If any of you have succeeded with this look or know of any reference to it in woodworking or finishing literature I would greatly appreciate hearing from you. Thank you.
*Alden, thanks for your words. I'm very familiar with the look that you are trying to achieve. It is the look that naturally occurs over time as a linseed based oil finish darkens. Add to the natural darkening of the linseed oil, one hundred years or so of candle and wood smoke and other oddities and you get exactly the look that you are going for. Clearly, you have a need to replicate that now without waiting one hundred years. I think the people at Mohawk might be able to help. Or, alternatively, look for a post on which Mr. Jeff Jewitt has replied on this bulletin board and get his email address. I'd be surprised if he cannot offer an exact formula and methodology for achieving this look.
*Alden,I have no idea if this is right, but it seems plausible, and I would also like to finish a piece like this in the future, so have an interest in finding the (an) answer.IF the dark part of the wood is more absorbent than the rest, I would think that you could get a good look by giving the entire piece a washcoat of garnet or button shellac. This will partially seal the wood, but more so the lighter area. It will also contribute the beginning of some color. After the shellac has dried, stain the piece with a penetrating oil stain, maybe a Vandyke brown color. The stain should barely or not at all be absorbed by the lighter parts of the wood while more fully staining the more absorbent darker figure parts.If CStanford is right about old pieces darkening naturally by virtue of a linseed oil process, it might make some sense in that the darker parts had absorbed more oil when it was initially applied and hence accentuated the difference over time.It would seem that any answer would have to take advantage of different absorbency, and it seems to me like a wash or seal coat is going to help exagerate that difference. If the darker parts of the wood are LESS absorbent, I can't immediately think of a way to use that for good effect.Using various grades or colors of shellac should be able to produce the straw color you want. When you've reached it, you could either stop adding additional coats, or topcoat with an alkyd (my choice) or polyurethane (solvent-based, not water-based) varnish, which is relatively clear.I'm with CS on the use of scrap. I start with small pieces until I think I've homed in on the result that I want, and then try it out on a large enough piece to see if it 'really' works. Good luck, I hope to hear what you did, and how it turned out for you.
*See the thread below "Die or Tinted Lacquer for Figured Maple", it is about this very issue. Jeff Jewitt has offered some suggestions.
*Alden, Two thoughts for your consideration:Old time violin makers would set their curly maple instrument backs and sides in the sun for a few days or weeks to bring up the figure. They traditionally didn't stain the wood at all but rather put on a thin coat of yellow varnish, followed by a shade of red or brown. A little unusual by today's standards, but sure made a beautiful finish. Perhaps some of their technique might be useful.I read Jeff's recipe for popping the grain on birdseye maple but can't remember it word for word. I have used a similar technique for years on curly grain, so I'll describe it instead. The curly grain is much more absorbent than the flat grain, so if you use a dye stain to color the piece enough to develop the correct color in the darkest parts, then wash off all the color you can with the appropriate solvent, you will find a lot of color left in the curl and not much in the flat grain, giving you a nice contrast.A light coat of glaze over a sealer coat, pretty much rubbed off, will soften the look and take a lot of the "new" off. Heavier glazing and a little selective wiping will give more of an antique look. Just leave a little glaze where dirt and old wax naturally accumulate with age.Practice first. HTHMichael R
*Thank you all for your help. Yes, it is true that the curl is a lot more absorbent than the "plain" grain. And you can definitely reduce the intensity of the color on the "uncurled" surface by either washing off the dye or sanding it off (or both). The way I color and finish, which is more or less the same as most other people who make period reproductions also do it, is (1) color the raw wood with a water-based aniline dye; (2) seal (I use shellac); (3) apply and wipe off a coat of glaze; (4) apply an appropriate number of finish coats; (5)optionally wax. The end result that I myself happen to get is a great finish, but only an average color. It's acceptable, but it's not the really great browns that some furniture makers get. The final color is the combination of original color and porosity of the wood, the color of the dye, and the color of the glaze. What I'm looking for is someone who can, from their own successful experience, recommend a particular dye ( e.g., Lockwood number 144) and a particular glaze (e.g., Mohawk 504-1435). Thank you.
*Can't make a specific recommendation for two reasons: I don't know exactly what YOU want, and I have hardly used pre-mixed stains in years, since eveything I do is custom. Since any prepared stain has to be adjusted anyway, I found it more convenient to just mix my own.My favorite stains are Microton stains from M. L. Campbell. I just stock Tinter Red, Blue, Yellow, and Black. From that, and with an artist's color wheel, I can get any color I want, exactly. You do have to measure accurately and keep track for repeatability, but plastic labware is cheap and makes the job easy.I don't know whether you can get pure tinter's colors from water stains, but you can from Mohawk's Ultra Penetrating stain, and also with Trans Tints, available from Homestead Finishing Products as well as from Woodcraft. You might want to try mixing your own colors. It's easier than it might seem and you get exactly what you want. The colors are more stable, too, than with anilines.As for glaze, any Burnt Umber or Van Dyke Brown glaze will do. I like Behlen's. It's more of a matter of application than medium.Go for it. It's fun.Michael R.
*Michael, thank you for your suggestions. You have been very generous with your time. If I could I would just ask you how I can contact this M.L. Campbell you recommended. I tried Mohawk's Ultra Penetrating Stain a few years ago, but I think I will give it another whirl. As far as I know you can buy the "component" (primary?) colors as dye powders for water-soluble aniline dyes. What is interesting is to take an open piece of paper towel and drop a small amount of water-based dye (say some kind of brown)in the middle (a teaspoon or less), and watch it separate into some of its component colors according to how far it will travel from the center of the spill to the outside of the ring. I often get a green ring around some brown stain when I dribble some on a paper towel this way. I would guess that the paper towel acts as a kind of filter allowing the finer color of green to leave the mixed "bundle" of brown. It's kind of like a medium blue dress shirt. If you look close, the shirt is actually a blend of dark blue and white thread, but from even a short distance it all looks as if it were one color. I'm wondering whether that is how powdered aniline dyes are done. They are already a mix of the primary colors in powder form, then mixed in the water vehicle, then dried in the wood as a blend giving an effect just like the shirt. One of the drawbacks of using water-soluble aniline dye in wood like curly maple is that the constituent colors often separate according to how far they can "swim" in the wood, just like they do in the paper towel. Some colors in a single stain seem to travel farther than others. That, I would guess, is why, when I use Lockwood's Honeytone Amber for example, I get a nice honey color on the "plain" or flat grain, but a weird green in the stripes. The constituent color of green seems to separate from the pack and collect in the stripes because of the difference in the porosity of the stripe as opposed to the rest of the surface. Perhaps this is overly speculative, but it's the only explanation I can think of. So perhaps the Ultra Penetrating dye stains are the way to go afterall. Or those from Microton. Again, my thanks to everyone!
*Some suppliers are:Furniturecaresupplies.comMeritindustries.comBeaverwoodworking.comHirshfields.comAbbotpaint.comPratherpaint.comIf you'll do a specific search under "M. L. Campbell" on Lycos, you'll come up with a lot more, perhaps one near you.
*Alden, for kicks I added 1 part cherry tinted Watco to 3 parts natural (untinted) Watco and applied it to a 4" x 12" piece of tiger maple in my shop. I let it sit for about fifteen minutes and wiped off and hand-buffed thoroughly. The stripes definitely picked up the color faster than the unstriped areas. It looks pretty good, with the overall piece getting a nice amber tone and plenty of stripe pop (even on the fully dried piece). I could envision one coat of Watco with the tint and then three more with the untinted "natural" finished off with a tinted (perhaps) wax topcoat (Brixwax, or Fiddes "stripped pine"). I don't have enough of this stock lying around to try other Watco colors, but I'm wondering what some of their other tints might do. The piece I did with the cherry tint sounds like it might come reasonably close to the look you are after. I kind of go limp when somebody starts talking about toning lacquers and all that stuff, I've done all that but man it's a hassle for a one-of piece. I have a feeling the solution is going to end up being easier than you thought.I'm not a Watco freak, I gave up spraying finishes in my own shop and opted for a simpler approach. For the most part, I've been able to achieve the look my client's want with hand-applied oils and by brushing lacquers and shellac, with an occassional French polish when necessary.When I stain, I use aniline dyes like some of the other posters have mentioned. I also occassionally make natural stains out of walnut husks, teas, coffee, etc. You might consider making a large cup of strong Lipton tea (about five teabags) and check out the look you get from that. Hey, natural tints are natural tints!!!!Good luck........
*Alden, You've just described a common experiment that is done in a lot of freshman chemistry labs, paper chormatography. I won't go into the gory details but the method you've described is a simple way to separate mixtures of chemicals. The experiment is usually done with different markers or pens and an appropriate solvent. A spot of ink is placed on the paper and and then the solvent is allowed to wick through the paper and the spot and the colors will separate, the longer you leave it in the solvent the further apart the constituent colors become. If you have a kid who needs a science project let him or her look at different brands of dyes and see if they are made up of different constituent colors. There are a lot of neat things that one can do with paper chromatography. Email me if you are interested.Bob
*This is a very good observation. You are quite right in observing that brown dyes are mixtures of primaries. While there are quite a number of natural and man-made brown pigments, when it comes to dyes there are very few.What you are observing is different solubilities of the component dyes. What this means is that the green you see at the far end of the paper towel is the most soluble of the components (which is expressed as grams per liter). The trick in making dyes is to keep the parameters of the individual dyes as close together as possible.That said, when it comes to dyeing wood, you shouldnt see separation of the components, provided you cover the entire surface with dye (front and back.)I'm not saying you may be wrong, but a greenish tinge with dyes is usually an anomally called "bronzing" in which the dye crystalizes back to its original form at the surface of the wood. One thing that bears stating is that quartersawn curly maple will show the dark curl vs. light wood better than plain sawn. Also, the curl areas seem to drink in an oil based dye better. We have good luck in using a lightwashcoat shellac, followed by gilsonite or asphaltum stain. Jeff
*Norm Vandal's book (highly recommended)"Queen Anne Furniture" goes into some detail on achieving a period look in tiger maple with stains and glazes. He uses Lockwood's Honeytone Amber Maple aniline dye followed by a dark brown graining liquid or glazing stain made by Stulb Paint or Behlen.
*Thanks for the post, Jeff. Both Jeffs. Actually, I tried several years ago what Mr. Vandal suggested in his excellent book, but the result was very splotchy. As I understand it, the initial application of a water-soluble aniline dye must be followed by a sealer/first coat, mainly because the dye has no binder in it and after drying is thus in the same state of "dust" as if it had dried on a piece of glass; except, of course, that it has been transported into the wood on water. IOW, it needs protection. Also, I think, but I could be wrong, that it is typical, if not necessary, for a glaze to be applied after a first, and often very thin, coat of finish (usually a spirit or oil/resin varnish) so that the glaze does not compete with the dye in the wood but lies somewhat suspended or sandwiched between the first and subsequent coats of finish. And, naturally, it does not get splotchy because the wood is then conditioned. If anyone out there has been successful laying out a glaze right on top of a dye on tiger maple, please comment. Thanks, everyone.
*All the dye stains I have ever used have soaked well into the wood and are the very dickens to remove. You can lighten them somewhat with the right solvent, but you can't get much color up by rubbing. I duplicate a lot of factory finishes, and I usually apply color corrrecting stains, base color (dye), and wiping stain without any intervening steps, unless there is an express reason to do so.A glaze applied to unsealed wood becomes, in effect, a slow drying wiping stain. A glaze is, by definition, a color coat applied and manipulated between finish coats. Michael R
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