Some years ago I built two china hutches out of cherry. Do to health & time restraints, the project has sat untouched. Now I’m back at it full tilt.
The problem is, and I saw it coming, the wood has aged & darkened. I made up the rasied panel doors this week & you guessed it, they look like a differant speices of wood.
Do I try to sand the old wood clean? Someone told me to try wood bleach. I know I can play with stains between the old & new woods, but they will most likely age out differantly anyway.
Most of the work is solid wood but the sides are veneered plywood. so excessive sanding is out.
Any ideas out there? Thanks Paul
P.S. Try not laughing too loud.
Replies
You could put the new ones out in the sun and darken them. For my recent work in cherry I wanted the darker tones but did not want to dye/ stain/ whatever so I set the stuff in the sun for a couple hours on a really sunny summer day. One or two turns like that and I got the tone I wanted. (More like I decided I wanted to tone I had created.) It might not work for you but it is easier than bleach /dye/ stain/ sanding/ etc. Try it on a piece or two of scrap and see if you like the results.
I think if you put the finished piece in a room with some southern sun exposure, they will even up. If you're not that patient, I've read accounts of people using lye or potassium dichromate to "age" wood. I've never tried it and apparantly it's dangerous, but I've read it works. My guess is that it will darken the wood, but maybe not necessarily make it match. Probably only time will do that.
They will even out eventually - at least to the same level that they would have if completed at the same time (i.e., there is natural variation anyway).
Putting the new pieces out in the sun will hasten the darkening somewhat, but time (possibly months) will only bring it all into full "focus".
Setting my new work in the sun seems like the best idea to me, I know cherry darkens rather fast. I won't be staining this project for a few weeks so I have so time. And I will do some sanding to the old work to clean up & prep for staining. Also, I know staining of cherry has come up only 1000 times here in knots & breaktime, but I'll bring it up again, Pretreat the wood or not to avoid blotchy color.
I will be using a oil stain & spray a precatalyzed lacquer, I use Magnalac by M.L. Campbell. I will be staining my wood a rather dark cherry color but not to dark as to cover the grain.
Thanks again for your input
Paul
With the darker colors my experience is that blotching isn't really much of an issue with Cherry. But if you want to be on the safe side you could just make a wash coat by mixing one part of pre-cat to two parts of thinner and spraying a light coat on (just enough to wet the wood). Give it plenty of time to dry since you're going to use an oil stain.
I recall an article in FWW a few issues back on how to stain or otherwise even out the color of cherry. You might want to a seach and find it.Dan Carroll
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