Good color penetration, poor saturation.

Signed-In Members Don't See This Ad
S

slincoln

Member
Joined
Jun 27, 2005
Messages
81
Location
Clinton, WA, USA.
I'm trying dye some woods under vacuum with Alumilite dye and Cactus Juice. Penetration is fine, saturation isn't. On a test using holly, alder and buckeye, I made sure that moisture content wasn't a factor by baking the blanks and cooling them in plastic, wouldn't register on the meter. In about a quart of CJ I put ½ bottle of black dye, pulled a good vacuum and let it run for hours. Soaked overnight and cooked it. The blanks stabilized nicely and turned out gray, not the black I was hoping for.

Same experiment using blue has similar results.

I tried the same thing with blanks that had been drilled and rough turned, same result.
I've seen alder "ebonized" so know it can be done. Question is, how do I do it?

Thanks much,

Scott
 
Signed-In Members Don't See This Ad
This is an old method I learned many years ago. Take a mason jar and fill it 3/4 full of ammonia and add steel wool to the jar. Cap the jar and let it soak until you get the black color you want. Pull out the steel wool, insert your blank, and let soak. Try to do this in an open area when ever you have the jar lid off. Once sealed, you can't smell it. I would also text Curtis and ask him if there are any dangers of mixing CJ with ammonia under vacuum, should you choose to do it that way. We used this method to turn oak black and make it look like the black japaned finish you see on many old pieces of furniture. This mixture can also be used as a wipe on stain to make wood look old and aged. The more you put on the darker it gets. One note, if you leave the steel wool in long enough it will desolve, so you may want to strain it before using. You can also use ammonia in a sealed plastic box or tent to give oak that old fumed look. This method was used hundreds off years ago, and is still used today. You place a small pan of ammonia in your tent, if a large object, or plastic box if it is smaller and let the fumes turn the oak a rich golden color. Much of this old furniture was made out of 1/4 sawn oak whick also brought out the rays and any flame patterns that were in the wood. Jim S
 
Last edited:
You should consider getting a gram scale and weighing your blanks before and after. Then you can compute the change and get an idea of how much Juice you are getting into the wood. I would guess you are doubling the weight of the blank. If so, your finished blank is 50% wood and 50% cured Juice. Black and red are both hard colors to get true. Equal parts of black (dyed Juice) and white (raw wood) give gray as the final color. With red, equal parts of red (dyed Juice) and white (wood) end up pink as the final color. In order to get good color, you need to end up changing the ratio. Make the Juice MUCH darker in order to overcome the color of the wood or use a very punky wood where you can get a higher concentration of Juice vs. wood.

Better yet, if you want black, ebonized wood, use ebony! :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom