Just finished mission hutch and fumed it(have fumed before).It came out darker than before ,maybe new oak had more tanin because the drawers turned out lighter after staining.(old stock,live and learn)Managed to get the drawers the same color as the rest,but still to brown,How do I pull off the stain short of sanding(oil based) ?
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You have run into one of the negatives associated with fuming. Namely, it is an uncontrollable process. Even oak from the same tree will sometimes react differently.
As far as I know, there is no way to reverse the coloring process.
Spiff,
Have you tried bleach?
Good old Clorox will take color out of most wood, but I've not seen it tried with fumed oak. You could experiment easily enough.
BUT, if you think it was hard to control fuming, you will feel you're being assailed by the whims of the cosmos using bleach. The times bleaching has worked for me, I removed just about all the color from the wood--not just the stain, or dye colors--ALL the color. It looked like albino oak! But it left me with wood that was all the same color to start with.
Amazingly, once I applied shellac or a stain (I've now forgotten what I did) the color came right back.
Alan
Sanding won't help with the fuming effects because they go fairly deep into the surface. I would lighten it with a pickle glaze. That is a thin fairly transparently tinted varnish (or other clear coat). For lightening white, yellow and combinations of the two are the only practical choices. Such treatment will obscure the grain somewhat but fortunately the oak has plenty of grain showing and will easily retain it's woody character. I like to spray on such coats (called veiling coats in the faux trade) because on open grained woods (like oak) there is a tendency to get too much color in the pores when brushing or wiping. I like to use a pastel tint of yellow for these lightening coats but sometimes a little green or orange is useful to shift the overall color appearance into the proper range. It sometimes helps to overlighten just a little and then overglaze (or tone) with a darker tint to get back to just right with dark on top now.
Are you talking about pulling off the oil-based stain, or lightening the color of the fumed parts?
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler." A. Einstein
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