Thread: Staining/Ebonising to make timber look like other species?

Thanks Matt, I really didn’t mean to put you to all of that work! Far be it for me to comment on LARGE furniture, I am also a big-is-better sort of designer? Do you mind if I check some of my suppliers, traditional and untraditional, for prices?

fletty

PS, just as a guide, the Blackwood table I posted earlier is, from memory, 1500 x 900 x 40 and the Blackwood for that was $340. Your main desk top is 2400 x 900 x 32 (?) so let’s call that 1.5 BWT (Black Wood Table), the monitor shelf another 0.5 BWT and that extrapolates (ie it’s too late to calculate!) to only $680 so far for the horizontal surfaces?

fletty

Yay veneer!

Now, to make your life fun, the boys at TimberWood will happily lay up all the veneers onto a 32mm MDF.

As for edging, it can be done both ways... It's all about design.

Modern desks lack edges. The MDF is first trimmed with a border of your timber, then the lot is sandwiched between two veneers front and back. This is how a cheap door is made.

The other method is you get the MDF veneered, you trim it to size, then put your borders on. Just like an early writing or Parliament desk. The width of the border comes down to style and preference.

The last is a bit better (IMO), for if you bang up the edge, you can simply reprofile it with a router. Also, the fact it is veneered is completely hidden.

With the first, you get a fine edge seem that can be seen from the side.

There are many here who love massive wood. I'm all for it.. But on a big desk, noone is going to know it is veneered... Plus you avoid all the nightmares of movement and huge bills (It will still be heavy as buggery)

I'll need to re-read what you are going to finish with....

Thanks Woodpixel and Fletty.

Fletty, no I don't mind at all, that'd be really helpful. The suppliers I checked were in Mulgrave and Marrickville.

... and I put me to all that work I do it to myself all the time.

Hi Matt,
As indicated by the old proverb, we are finding ‘too many ways to skin a cat’ so I decided to approach this by looking at HOW I would make what I think you have in mind? 2 key costs that I received from suppliers and other furniture makers relating to how I would make it are below;

• 2400 x 1200 x 25mm thick double sided veneered plywood $285
• 175 x 38mm solid walnut $44 + GST/LM

IF a thick desk top is a design feature I would either put on a thick edging piece as described above by WP, or I would make a torsion box top which would use 2 pieces of 12 mm ply, only one of which would be veneered. You also need to take into account that the desk top alone would be a significant weight and too heavy and too awkward for 1 person to lift. As weight will be an issue, I would most probably end up making a torsion box, 12 mm veneered top, simple internal bracing and probably 6 mm unveneered undersurface. Without knowing details of verticals and hutch, I would be happy to give a customer a budget price that would include total timber at $1000.

fletty

Thanks again Fletty. I'm not actually going for a thick desk top - I was aiming for 25mm thick for all the horizontal surfaces. However, the thickness of the dressed timber I was looking at came in 19, 32, and something thicker and I thought 19 might not be thick strong enough for the task.

Thanks for the point about weight - I'll do some estimating to make sure what I build won't break my back. The torsion box is a really good suggestion - seems to be a similar concept to the I-beam in pushing most of the material to the outer surfaces where tension/compression is greatest - that could definitely be employed to keep weight to a minimum.

Matt

I know this is an old thread, but I noticed it while researching ebonizing, and thought I’d share a project I just finished.

I recently completed building my first banjo. This one is made from yellow birch and oak (the fingerboard is richlite, so it was black already). I used iron acetate to darken it, both the birch and the oak, and was quite pleased with how it came out. The oak turned black- most of the irregularities there are me doing a little light sanding to get a more rustic appearance. The birch turned into a nice chocolate brown, akin to what naturally finished walnut might look like.

Anyway, just thought it would be a good contribution to the thread. This was intended as a sound sample, but also has pictures as a slideshow.

Banjo Build #1 - Birch/Oak, fretless tackhead banjo. - YouTube

Cheers,
Noodlin