Thread: Making wood black

just make sure you wear a very good pair of gloves, or two on the hand applying the black prooftint. If you do get some on your hands, metho will help to clean it off.

If the glove breaks and you end up with black fingertips & black nails, the good ole pumish stone will take care of most it and dark nail polish for the rest....

Liquid clothes dye from the supermarket is fantastic. Not just the black but all different colors. Just remember to lightly dampen the timber to raise the grain then lightly sand it smooth then apply the dye.

Here is a link that explains it in some detail.
http://www.wkfinetools.com/cc_how/Re...son-EbWood.asp
Hope it helps
SG

Tried liquid black boot polish once with a poor result, but the kind of timber is a big variable.

With a desert ash bowl that you want to 'dekerate' you can char it with a torch and then put on a coat or two of shellac and it'll be very nearly black. (The heat does tend to crack it however at which point it morphs into the rustic bowl you were intending to make but hadn't been conscious of.)

Eliza,

I would try black aniline dye dissolved in an alcohol solution.

I commonly buy powdered fabric dyes and use isopropyl or methanol to dissolve the dye crystals, the alcohol strips out the dye and you are left with a sediment of fillers etc. Its cheaper than commercial aniline dye but then the commercial stuff is so concentrated a little goes a long way. Probably be better for commercial work.

I use the alcohol base as it doesn't raise the grain on small finished pieces, as bad as water based dyes and it dries quickly too.

I make dye pots out of PVC plastic plumbing pipe, cut it to length to fit the sticks then glue a cap on one end and a threaded clean out on the other to load the sticks and the dye. The clean out acts as a seal so the alcohol doesn't evaporate too quickly between batches and you just swish them around in the pot for as long as you want. A zip lock bag works well for a few test items.

Hope this helps, Trevor

We use "ebonizer" - an oil-based pigment stain on our fingerboards to black them out. stewmac.com sells the stuff in the US but can't ship it here to Oz.

Another way of getting this done is to tent your finished pieces with a jar of anhydrous ammonia - available from any blueprint supply house. This was a popular practice about 100 years back in the Craftsman furniture factories - Roycroft, Stickley, etc. - to "pop" the medullary rays in White Oak. I have done this a few times and it works fairly well, but the chemicals are gnarly to work around and the "blacking" does not penetrate too deep.

I recommend against using alkali or metal acid dyes for your particular application.

Good luck with it.

(NOTE: While not a chemical engineer, I am reasonably certain that for the ammonia tenting to work, your stock has to have a fairly high tannic acid content)

I have been using proof tint for finials lately but it does react slightly with the DO that I put over the top of it so if you use it check that your finish does not have an adverse reaction with it .

Ted

Eliza, a time ago I tried to ebonize a simply pine bowl (not so a good wood), just for to see the result.
I put some descriptions on each picture.
First I gave it a treatment with strong tea for added tannen.
Used a solution of vinigar with steelwool.
Hope my try out help a bit.
Have fun. Ad

http://www.ubeaut.com.au/dye.html

Hi Eliza,
I used to use a homemade iron acetate solution (vinegar and steelwool) to blacken wood. For wood that has low tannin content, you can apply (and let dry) a coat or two of very strong black tea first, then apply the iron acetate.
As a convenience (fast and easy) issue, I have lately been using India Ink (from craft stores) to blacken the wood, and it does a fine job, with much less trouble.
Attached is a pic of my first real finial (made two days ago) turned from Lemon tree wood, blackened with India Ink, and coated with 5 coats of gloss lacquer. It looks pretty black....
Cheers,

Originally Posted by ElizaLeahy

I've got someone who wants me to make lots of hairsticks, that she will then decorate and resell. We settled on size, shape and price, but she wants most of them to be black. She doesn't mind if it's black artificially.

Has to be non toxic, so I'm not sure about indian ink?

I tried ebonising with vinigar and rusty nails, I've had the solution sitting for months. Worked pretty well on red cedar - but didn't go as far as making it black, just very dark. Tried it on some gum with mixed results - parts went VERY black, parts hardly darkened.

I'll go search for "ebonizing wood"

Thanks

India Ink is used for tatoos, I can't beleive it would be toxic.