I am looking to match a wenge color finish (dark without the wenge streaks) with a stain and more readily available wood. I originally thought walnut, but that is not an option because my client is not a walnut fan.Could someone please suggest a common wood type and stain combination that would come close to the dark, rich tone of wenge. Grain size is not too big an issue, however my client does not like pronouced grain. He is looking for a consistant tone across the panels to be stained. Perhaps a gel stain over a sealer??
Thanks,
Dan
Replies
Wenge is interesting because of the grain pattern, but your client doesn't want that. I hope his objection to actually using wenge is that the grain is too pronounced not based on the cost. By the time you get dying other woods sorted out your time would surely be worth as much as the extra cost for the wenge.
The woods with the least apparent grain--diffuse porous woods such as maple or even poplar could be dyed to reach wenge color (at least one of the colors). These woods are a bit prone to blotching, though with dye this is not as pronounced as it would be with an oil based stain containing pigment.
Mahogany would dye very readily, and could be chosen to be relatively straight even grained--"patternmakers grade" for example. But this would be indistinquishable from walnut if both were dyed the same color.
You could also use rift cut oak. Rift cut to avoid the flake of quarter sawn and the arches of plane sawn leaving a pretty mild grain structure. If you filled the pores with matching filler they would not be prominent. Filled with darker colored filler they would emulate the wenge streaks.
Good luck--and remember do lots of samples on scrap.
Steve,
Thank you for your help. rift-cut oak sounds like a good solution. right now I'm thinking about using a dark gel-stain to give an even appearance without a lot of fuss. The project is wood office panels and it would really pain me to use an exotic wood like wenge, not to mention my clients wallet. Do you think the gel stain is a good color solution? I've used watco's dark walnut stain before with some success, but that leaves the wood a bit too reddish.
Thanks again,
Dan
I think a two part program with the rift cut oak could be the easiest in the end. Sometimes more is less. I would first use a dye stain, water mixed or NGR, to get the base color and darkness right. You can mix these to get exactly the color you want. Then a light sealing coat of shellac (or whatever you spray), and apply a pigmented stain a bit darker, to fill in the pores a bit. The end result would look pretty darn close to wenge. Since the dye and seal coat will take very little time, the total process will end up being pretty fast and much more elegant than just the gel stain by itself.
Steve is correct that rift-cut oak will give you a very close match to wenge after staining.
DR
If you want it to look like wenge, use wenge; if you wenge to be smooth like maple, use a filler stain.
You can find filler stain by Googling it. I'd investigate http://www.midwayusa.com/ebrowse.exe/browse?TabID=8&Categoryid=10519&categorystring=649***8816***, who makes a few colors besides red mahogany. Most boatbuilders used filler stain, like Interlux, on Honduras mahogany to fill that wood's texture. I like filling the grain with a few extra, hand rubbed coats of varnish.
Gary W
gwwoodworking.com
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