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Hello All,

Yesterday I was surfing through a few woodworking sites & came across a technique for staining or darkening wood that was new to me. For mahogany, these folks recommended using a solution of Drano or lye crystals (Red Devil or equivalent) at 1 Tbsp per 8 oz. water & wiping this on the wood.

After a few hours to a day or so, wipe with vinegar to stop this darkening process. Supposedly the coloring penetrates deeper than dye or stain & can be lightly sanded without affecting the color intensity too much.

Another guy suggested spraying on oven cleaner (contains lye) to do the same thing. Brilliant! I thought. So, off to the Piggly Wiggly (southern grocery chain) for some Easy-Off.

Sprayed this stuff on sapele scraps (I know, not a "real" mahogany)& on spruce shelving board scraps. Wow! In 5 minutes the spruce was three shades darker (amber) & the sapele was almost too dark red. I wiped off half the oven cleaner from each scrap & stopped the reaction on that half with a wipe of vinegar.

After an hour I wiped off the rest of the oven cleaner & applied vinegar. The sapele had darkened significantly more but the spruce had only darkened another 15% or so.

Have any of you tried this kind of thing before? Could there be unforseen problems?

I'm gonna let this stuff dry & watch it for a few days to see if it dissolves or weakens the wood in some way. The cool thing about the spruce is that the color is a warm amber tone & looks even without any splotchiness. A possible treatment for warming up those ghostly white Englemann tops. Of course more thorough testing is in order. We'll see ...

Skip

Skip Beach38375.7996643518

Interesting, did it obscure the grain or interfere with the natural figure of the wood in any way?

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Brock Poling
Columbus, Ohio
http://www.polingguitars.com

I've darkened mahogany and maple with a vinegar/steel wool solution (details in the MIMF library on the process), and I'm not sure I liked it too much. Bit too 'gray', and it's difficult to get a clean, even coat overall. It did accentuate the grain quite a bit, though.

I'll stick to tinted shellac for a bit of warmth, and let woods do what they will.

Hi again,

Brock, the effect of this lye application is much like red analine dye on the sapele. The light & darker areas of grain are colored & darkened equally so the whole thing is toned down towards the red. Mattia, I rather agree with you about prefering tinted shellac as it's much more easily predictable & controlled. Time also will further turn the sapele darker & towards the red.

On the spruce this lye application has potential because it doesn't seem to be splotchy like ordinary dye or stain tends to be. It also seems that spruce has only a little of the inherent chemical that the lye is reacting to as the effect is substantially less dramatic than with sapele. Would this be tannic acid? I'll try this on a few more spruce scraps to confirm this even coverage further.

Skip

I have to say that I have never had the urge to dye any wood. I like whichever woods I choose to be true to themselves.

Colin

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I don't believe in anything, I simply make use of a set of reasonable working hypotheses.