Thread: Making a 'Mulberry' Corner Cabinet

It just gets better and better

At last, I'm up to the actual mulberrying stage. All the show wood was given a final wash down with hot water to remove any grime and glue residue before liberally wiping it over with aqua fortis (nitric acid).


One of the lower doors stained with aqua fortis.

When the wood was thoroughly dry, I brushed it over with a mixture of boiled linseed oil and lamp black per Stalker & Parker's recommendation[1]. I allowed the black oil to soak in for about five minutes and then wiped off the surplus.


The black oil highlights the wild grain.

The oil will be left to dry for about two days before proceeding.


[1] John Stalker & George Parker, A Treatise of Japanning and Varnishing, Oxford, 1668.

I could have sworn I pulled up and got comfortable early on in this piece I can't locate the post

Boy has it come along way the crowd has drawn closer for a better look now I got to push my way through for a better view. Hum might have to pay for Satvison.

As for greenies Feltty till they arrive no choc biscuits for you even though your about to walk through the door

This has got to be the best WiP since Niki's last besides Powderposts segmenting work oh and Mic-ds plane restoration

That's amazing the way you have highlighted the grain there, WW. Awesome work

Looking very nice indeed.

While waiting for other substances to dry on the show wood, I dealt with colouring and protecting the cabinet's exposed external Pine surfaces with a minium wash.

It became common practice in the 18th century to wash the back boards of case furniture with minium (also known as red lead); its opacity disguised the (often second grade) Pine boards and its toxicity was an effectual insecticide against attack by furniture beetles.

Lead, in its various forms, has been known to man for thousands of years and the Romans, who employed it in abundance, were all too aware of its toxic nature, naming it morbi metallici. The Romans also gave the name minium to lead tetroxide, after the area by the Miño River in northern Spain whence it was extracted from naturally occurring deposits (minium can also be produced artificially from a solution of lead nitrate and sodium hydroxide).


Natural lead tetroxide.


Minium pigment.

When new, minium is the brightest orange imaginable, however, after spending maybe, three hundred years on the back of a chest or cabinet, next to a damp wall, chemical reactions with the atmosphere, other compounds in the wash and chemicals within the wood itself, can render the original orange anywhere between salmon pink and chocolate brown.


Coffer with a minium-washed Pine back.


A heavily oxidised minium-washed corner cabinet back.


A sulphur-rich environment can turn minium virtually black.

I made up a pot of minium wash, comprising an extender, a binder and several pigments (to help simulate the natural oxidisation of an aged minium wash) and brushed it liberally over the external Pine of the two cabinet tiers.


The lower cabinet exterior sporting its minium wash.

Always educational WW

I can't work out which bit of the lower cabinet in the last photo has the minium wash on it. Maybe I'm just being slow though

Cheers,
dave

Originally Posted by Ozkaban

Always educational WW

I can't work out which bit of the lower cabinet in the last photo has the minium wash on it. Maybe I'm just being slow though

Cheers,
dave

It's the dull reddish looking triangular area that occupies the top right half of the image.

Originally Posted by Woodwould

It's the dull reddish looking triangular area that occupies the top right half of the image.

It was me being slow then! Can I blame the colours on my monitor

Thanks WW.

Cheers,
Dave

We learn more & more!

Again interesting

:enthralled:

Everyone on the bench says

Fantastic WW. How long have you beeen washing with minium Attachment 135394 Hogarth?