100% saturation of lumber


duckkisser

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I have been looking around the net and i cant find anyone who has intentionally saturated their lumber. I am planning on soaking my lumber in an ebonizing solution to turn the entire board solid black. If anyone know how long a board needs to be in vinegar to soak in all the way to the middle please let me know. Or if you know of a web site or person who might know it will save me months of testing. Also does vinegar go bad or does the solution of steel wool and vinegar lose its intensity.

I plan on takeing a large plastic container and cover both cherry and walnut with a mixture of steel wool and vinegar. (I tried this with small pieces in a jar and they turned black all the way through the middle). Then I am going to air the lumber for a year to try and get it to a manageable stable moisture(unless I can find someone with a kin). Would it be better to use green lumber or already dried wood.

If it works I think ill try doing this for my own use and selling replica ebony wood on ebay

Please add your thoughts about how well you think this will work or not work.

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Indeed. The link in question is Vacuum Infusing and it appears to be a good way to do veneers.

In a nutshell, capillary action can only pull pigments so far into the fibers of any wood. Mileage varies by a.) the openness of the grain structure and b.) the size of the pigment particles. i.e. A coarse stain on maple won't soak in at all, whereas a finely ground dye might soak clear through the long, open pores of red oak.

Vacuum infusing is a three-step process to help get pigment into the wood:

  1. The pieces to be dyed are placed in a pressure vessel and a vacuum pump evacuates the air.
  2. Without compromising the vacuum (that's the tough part) sufficient liquid dye is added to the container to cover the pieces.
  3. The vacuum pump is reversed and the vessel is brought up to high pressure.

Thus, not only is the pressurized air pushing the dye into the wood, any air that was originally inside the wood (which might have pushed back) has been evacuated. Ultimately, the pressure is released (slowly, please!) and the sopping wet wood or veneer can then be dried and worked with the color running all the way through.

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As far as getting stuff black all the way through, try the following link: http://www.aawforum.org/vbforum/archive/index.php?t-4403.html

The steel wool and vinegar trick is nothing more than an ancient household recipe for getting an aqueous solution of iron ions. (Solid iron plus a dilute acid) Bob Chapman proposes that it's more direct simply to buy ferrous sulfate tablets and dissolve those in water. FeSO4 is sold at drugstores to fight anemia, it's also used as a moss killer in gardening. The important thing is to get a solution of iron ions, because that's what colors the wood black. Witness what happens when a nail is driven into a board and exposed to the elements.

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Seems to me someone told me they use pressure to stain/colour pen blanks. Since those are small.. @ 1" square or so they would be much easier to get uniform colour throughout than a larger/thicker stock.

i will probably do 3/4 thick boards first then after they dry plain them down to a managable size. as for pressure i dont have the knowledge or the supplies to set up a pressure press..........yet maybe some day

seems like dry wood would absorb the solution much more readily than green lumber. keep us posted on your results

it might be a year before i can throw some info at you but i will eventuly post my results

Indeed. The link in question is Vacuum Infusing and it appears to be a good way to do veneers.

In a nutshell, capillary action can only pull pigments so far into the fibers of any wood. Mileage varies by a.) the openness of the grain structure and b.) the size of the pigment particles. i.e. A coarse stain on maple won't soak in at all, whereas a finely ground dye might soak clear through the long, open pores of red oak.

Vacuum infusing is a three-step process to help get pigment into the wood:

  1. The pieces to be dyed are placed in a pressure vessel and a vacuum pump evacuates the air.
  2. Without compromising the vacuum (that's the tough part) sufficient liquid dye is added to the container to cover the pieces.
  3. The vacuum pump is reversed and the vessel is brought up to high pressure.

Thus, not only is the pressurized air pushing the dye into the wood, any air that was originally inside the wood (which might have pushed back) has been evacuated. Ultimately, the pressure is released (slowly, please!) and the sopping wet wood or veneer can then be dried and worked with the color running all the way through.

i tried this with some small samples in a jar and it did end up soaking all the way through the pieces were 1"x1"x4"-6" long and it worked only place it didnt was in a small streak around the knot but i think that if i left it in longer it would have worked. the wood had no ill effects in fact the acid in the vinigar and the cool temps in shop made shure that the wood did not decompose any. thinking the only way to find out if this will work is to try it on a biger scale. going to do a couple big boards and the rest will be small pieces that can be turned into pens ect.....

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  • 2 years later...

I realize this reply is 2 1/2 years after the question but I am not only interested in blackening wood through and through but I also wanted to share with you my personal experience of saturating wood. When I was a kid, we bought land which had been planted 20+ years before with pines for pulpwood. We cut the trees over a period of a year or so, always cutting on the proper sign of the moon to help maximize the life of the end result (fence posts), then we would peel the bark off with our homemade post peeler. We had a large vat which we had built where we would chain the posts together in approx 3' x 4' bundles (posts were 3"-12" in diameter). We set 3 bundles inside the vat, end to end, then poured in oil and mineral spirits until the bundles were completely covered. We used chains to prevent the bundles from floating up to the top but not held to the bottom either. We and soaked them for 2 weeks or until the bundles sunk completely to the bottom then took the bundles out and let them drain. ( Note: Yes we know that the oil and mineral spirits are harmful to the environment but we did not know that then. We stopped once we found out. We sold the rest of our trees for pulpwood.) We used the oil so it would kill the grass around the fence posts...it did that well about 2-3" away from the posts.

 

The posts were soaked through and through and would sweat on hot summer days. It has been almost 40 years and the posts are still as solid as ever. However, we did cut one batch of posts on the bad sign of the moon to see if it would make a difference. Within 10-20 years, they had all rotted as if they had never been treated and broke off at ground level. My dad has since passed away but I am still trying to find evironmental friendly ways to make woodworking projects stronger; more flexible and durable; and more unique. Currently, I am working on pickling wood with vinegar as we did with oil years ago but with a different set up and testing the effects that will have on laminating the same lumber.

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