dyeing

[gsdoby]

I am thinkingabout dyeing some pens. Any thoughts or ideas about where to buy dyes?

 

[Jerryconn]

Woodcraft has some dyes, I was at the local store on Fri and the guy that worked there had jsut finished some pens of curly maple that he dyed and they turned out pretty good

 

[davidrei]

I've used Solar Lux with some good results. It has the advantage of including a little UV protection, so in theory, the colors won't fade as fast. Don't have any old enough to say if this is true or not. But in any case, at least stay with alcohol based dyes, not the water based ones. Alcohol dyes won't raise the grain of wood as much.

 

[BigRob777]

I've used spirit stain, from nils at csusa. My best results have been from brushing it on, just prior to final sanding. I do 400, 600, 1,200 grit sandpaper, then stain and hit it with the sandpaper again, before finishing it off with MM. I only use 4 or 5 steps (to 12,000). It came out good, but I hadn't soaked it well enough and stopped a bit shy on the sanding. By that, I mean that I didn't sand as long as I normally would. On the clip end, I probably hit it with the 400 too long. I should have skipped it and gone right to 600.

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I'm having my curly maple professionally dyed and stabilized right now, as my own experiments didn't work out very well, with the dyeing of maple blanks.
Rob

 

[ken69912001]

I agree with BigRob. I use chestnut stain but now CSUSA no longer carries it(sold out)and there is no other suppier in the USA.