Dye for wood

[Travis_Wright]

I've also found that if you gently sandblast the wood before adding the dye the wood holds the dye better.

 

[weo]

if you gently sandblast

for those of us without sandblasters, what grit sandpaper would that be?

 

[Travis_Wright]

for those of us without sandblasters, what grit sandpaper would that be?

Not sure. I've never done it any other way.

 

[Hengelo_77]

Just on the side, there are two kinds of leather dye, alcohol based and oil based. They'll probobaly give different results

 

[weo]

They'll probably give different results

I was wondering about this. My current choices are all the alcohol based, and I was waiting for someone to address this before trying.

 

[Randydb]

Very interesting stuff. I would have predicted very little absorption and penetration. That it would be left on the surface and wear off quickly. Very cool. Thanks for the experiments!

 

[Britt_Askew]

I let an unstabilized piece of maple to sit in the dye for 6 hours and it penetrated most all the way, sanded a piece 50 strokes and nothing but green. I have put another stabilized piece in and will let it soak a week.
Travis are you sandblasting stabilized wood?

 

[Travis_Wright]

Travis are you sandblasting stabilized wood?

Yes, I've done it to stabalized wood as well as unstabalized. It works great and retains more color this way. I learned this technique from a mastersmith in Tennessee as a way of getting around alot of hand sanding. It works really well on curly maple and other more porous woods.

 

[Britt_Askew]

Here is the piece that was not stabilized, soaked for 6 hours. Dye soaked completely through.


Here is the piece that soaked for a week. I had expected soaking for a week would have been dyed deeper , its basically just on the surface



After seeing this I think any stabilized wood dyed after the fact will just have dye on the surface and if the knife sees alot of use it will probably look like my hammer handle