I have a oil based penetrating stain in a color that I love. What I would like to know is there a way I could get it to behave almost like a semi- transparent stain. This is for interior work. When I apply it there is a stage when it has begun to penetrate and some of the grain is showing but not all of it(I would like to reproduce this look in a permanent way), then the stain finishes soaking in and all the grain is showing. Is there a way I can achieve the look I want. Can you “Paint” the stain on? Cant the stain be mixed with a finish?
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I think what you want is a Gell stain or a glaze. Gell stains come "colored" although you might need to fix a could to get the right shade.
Glazes come with a neutral base and need to have pigments mixed in with them.
There are other technics that might get you want you want.
One is to use a dye to get the base color that you want. Then a light stain to give just enough color to hint at the grain without making it stand out.
Another product are toned finsihes.
You might look at Flexnor's Understaind Wood Finishes or Jeff Jewitts's Finishing Books.
Run to the paint store and look real carefully at the small print on a can of solvent based wood conditioner. (Minwax's is ok)
You'll note a description about it being used as the base for a custom stain. What they do is add the same pigment used in paint to this conditioner and then mix the hell out of it.
Depending upon your coverage methods and number of coats, one can play with these "custom"stains to get more of a desired effect.
This door was treated first with a bright green dye and then followed by such a stain as described above. I used two coats of the stain on this one. Three coats covered up too much grain for my taste, but it could be right for you.
Is that an oak door? Did you leave the coditioner as a top coat or was there a protective top coat on top of the conditioner?
Yes. Two coats of spar ureathane. It's in a fairly well protected from sun and rain area. Sorry the quality of the photo isn't better...
But you lead into another important point:
Applying this top coat changes the transparency and color (in some hues). Before one sets himself on a certain color scheme, complete the entire application of all successive topcoats to see if things change.
For instance above, the spar ureathane added a bit of amber color as well as took out a whitish tone.
Edited 9/2/2004 8:46 am ET by stonefever
Wow! What a nice door! Good job.
With some shellac, denatured alcohol, dyes and pigment stains you can achieve the look you want.
Getting both of those books mentioned above will cover this topic, and cover the use of toners (tinted finishes)
Head over to homesteadfinishing.com its Jeff Jewitt's website, he has forums and his own finishing supply shop online there. Invaluable info can be found there.
The look you want can be achieved, but it will take some extra steps. Shellac cut to around a 1lb cut will allow you to limit both the dye and pigment absorbtion, lightly sanding will allow you to even out the differences in grain contrast when you apply a second coloring. Toners even out the coloring.
You can make your own stains by using Japan Colors, buy adding more pigment youll create the opaque look you may want. Its all about experimenting on the wood with your mediums.
You can probably get more help by being specific about the wood youre using and the color(s) you want to achieve. No one here can really give detailed advice w/o detailed information.
The wood that I experimenting on is pine right now as it is cheap. The color stain I have is Minwax Sadona Red 222 that is the color I am trying to acheive. Kind of like bloodwood. Thanks for the info so far I am going to head over to the websites you mentioned and take a look around.
You have two problems with your experiment. You're using Pine and Minwax. Pine is vary unevenly grained and porous. This will cause uneven absorption of the stain. The other problem is that you're using Minwax. That particular stain is a pigmented stain. It gets its color from little flecks of pigment. Pigment stain is known for exaggerating grain. The bigger the grain patterns and pores, the more pigment stains will exaggerate them. Pigment stains also get darker with more coats. That's because they don't really absorb into the wood but more or less sit on top of the wood.
I used the Minwax Sedona Red on an oak handrail. I wanted a deep red with grain pattern. The combination of the pigmented stain and oak grain gave me exactly what I wanted. You actually want the opposite grain effect.
You have a few options:
gel stain (as previously mentioned) - don't use Minwax. The thicker the stain, the better. Minwax is fairly thin and therefore doesn't hide the grain pattern as well as a thick gel stain.
dye stains - dyes penetrate into the wood and don't really get their color from the same flecks that is used in pigmented stains. This gives a more even grain patter. It is the recommended for grainy woods such as oak.
seal the wood then stain - the premise here is that you seal all the pores of the wood and therefore create an even surface for the stain. I've never done this so I won't comment.
Bob Flexner's book is excellent for staining and finishing wood. It's basically where I learned all about finishing wood. Experimentation, such as what you're doing, is also a great learning tool.
You can have control of this with products from Mohawk Finishing.
The base concentrates can be used to make up custom stain colors if you also buy some of their reducer and......... the same product can be used in lacquer thinner or mixed with lacquer and then used as a color toner and/or glaze.
If you're not familiar with these products and intend to use the base concentrate as a colored glaze to achieve your target color, I'd suggest that you first lay down a coat of Zinnser's Sealcoat. This way if you make a boo-boo with the colorant diluted in lacquer thinner, you can remove the mistake with a cloth saturated in lacquer thinner and none of the color will penetrate the wood itself. You can then start over with a clean slate. When you get your desired color result, shoot your clear lacquer coats (nitro or catalyzed) over it.
Or...you might choose to stain first, allow that to dry, then seal that down with the Sealcoat ........and then do some additional toning over that. Then your clear coats.
If you want to use a finish other than a lacquer (varnish or poly) for your final clear coats, you'll want the universal colorant instead.
These are highly concentrated colorants and a quart goes a long way.
If you don't really want to set up an account and all that, check with your local furniture and cab shops. They (or one of them) probably have the stuff on their shelves and can supply you with what you need.
http://www.mohawkfinishing.com/SubCat.asp?CatID=13&img=headstain%2Egif
Edit: If you use this stuff as a toner or dissolved in lacquer, it has to be sprayed....... as it dries too fast to be brushed on without getting streaky results.
Knowledge is power, but only if applied in a timely fashion.
Edited 9/2/2004 12:46 am ET by GOLDHILLER
Thanks for the help guys, that mohawk site is great so are the other ones. I think what I am looking for can be acomplished by applying a glaze. Thanks again everyone!
While I'm at it, I'll toss a pic in here as an example of what can be done using the base concentrates as a toner.
One of our clients bought a bunch of doors from a late 1800's hotel that was about to be demolished and wanted those doors retrofitted and hung in their house. As you can imagine, the doors had been beat to snot over the years, but they wanted them nonetheless for the style.
After stripping off the existing finish, we discovered we had a real challenge on our hands to make these things look decent. The doors originally had a very dark stain and finish which covered up some less than pretty wood underneath. Which brings me to another topic. Frequently we hear people speaking of the importance of maintaining clarity of the wood grain to get the best final result. I couldn't disagree more. While some wood needs/deserves to be shown off, some wood doesn't really have anything to offer visually in terms of it's grain or color and will look far better if that grain is somewhat or totally masked from view. Whether one does this using paint, black or cream colored lacquer or with multiple coats of a shading and toning lacquer is a judgement call relative to where it's gonna live.
Anyway, the pic shows a door with three different shades of color that were all done with the exact same mix of base concentrate colorant. Varying amounts of it on different parts of the door. We retrofitted the doors, then took 'em back to the shop for finishing and this pic was taken after we hung the door to check the final fit as we began masking off the rest of the woodwork in that part of the house for it's toning job. The exact same blend of color was then used to tone in the casings you see around the door. I don't have any pics available here right now that show everything in it's final state, but this pic should give you some notion of how much control you have over color using base concentrate as a toner.
Knowledge is power, but only if applied in a timely fashion.
Thanks for all the info, its prety cool what you can do with toners and such. I am going to try your sujestion you had with spraying thin layers of the stain I like first. if that doesn't work should I put a layer of stain down of the color I like then mix up a glaze that matches and put a layer of that on, then put the final clear coat on? Or should I skip the stain I have and use toners and such only? Like I said I am going to try the layers of stain first because I dont know if I have the artistic skills to mix up colors.
Whether you want to stain first or not....depends.
Bet you're tired of hearing that, but it's the truth. lol
Depending upon the species of the wood you're coloring and how that particular wood reacts to staining, it can either subdue the appearance of the grain or make it pop more.
As a rule, the least amount of grain pronouncement will take place if you seal off the wood first with a clear coat (like Sealcoat) and then shoot your toner over the top of that. It's more or less like laying down layers of colored cellophane until you get where you want to go colorwise. That's no a hard and fast rule though. Some woods will have less pronounced grain if you stain them with a color close to the natural color of the darker areas of grain first.
Depending upon how deep of a color you're heading for and how much grain you want or need to show when you arrive there, will be the determining factor as to whether one would stain or dye the wood prior to any toning.
If the grain you have there on your project isn't offensive to you when it's stained and you simply would like to have it darker altogether, then you might want to just shoot the toners over the stained wood. This was a pine project? Pine likes to splotch pretty badly as a rule when stained and so if you have some of that and wish to get rid of it, then I'd shoot a clear first and then shoot colorant as a glaze or toner over that. A bit of experimenting should offer you some answers as to your tastes and needs. Just make sure you let all the solvents evaporate before sealing down. This could take awhile with an oil-based stain product. The Mohawk base concentrate used as a stain or as a toner is good to go in 15 minutes......but you could end up with quite a bit of coin wrapped up in a selection of various colors from which to blend most anything you would ever need and minimum orders now are of course + tax + S&H. It's an investment to be sure. $110 -120 or so by the time it's on your doorstep, I think.
An alternative for you might be to use your current stain product to stain the wood and do your subsequent toning with the Trans-Tint dyes from Homestead carried in shellac (Sealcoat). That should leave you with an end result ready to receive whatever finish is your final choice or need.
The dyes used as a toner won't have the same hiding capabilities of the Mohawk base concentrate though because there aren't any substantial amount of pigments involved.
Don't forget to experiment with all this before you take aim on your real quarry.
See? Time for another edit. If you pick up some Zinnser's Sealcoat, look at the date on the can. while shellac can survive and remain viable for over a year onthe shelf, it's best to buy fresh product. 6 months and you're okay fer sure, but after that it's anybody's guess. If it goes bad, it won't set up properly and will remain tacky.
Knowledge is power, but only if applied in a timely fashion.
Edited 9/2/2004 1:07 pm ET by GOLDHILLER
At the risk of sounding low-tech here after Goldhiller's in-depth colour magic, I might have a much simpler solution to your problem if I understand it correctly.
Seems you want to have the colour that you've already got, but have it half-way to a solid-stain type of finish.
Minwax's transparent stains lend themselves very nicely to this sort of thing. You need to do three things.
1. Pre-treat the wood with Minwax's Wood Conditioner. This semi-seals the pores and prevents blotchy absorption. It is especially important to use this with softwood like pine.
2. Within 2 hours of conditioning, lay on a coat of stain with a brush, and don't wipe it off. Let it dry. If it's not heavy enough, lay on another coat, and another if necessary. Let dry completely between coats.
3. Take some steel wool (start with 0 and go down to 000) and rub the 'mud' off the surface of the wood just until it looks the way you want. This is stroke by stroke colour control. You are now basically 'erasing' the dried pigment on the surface until it's just as dark/light as you want right there. And since it's already dried, WYSIWYG. You're not guessing what it will look like later.
When you're all done, you can put any finish coat you want on top, from oil to wax to poly to varnish. Or nothing; all that hand rubbing gives a hard, smooth surface that will stand up to most anything except heavy foot traffic....
Dinosaur
'Y-a-tu de la justice dans ce maudit monde?
Try Penetrol. An oil-based additive. Most stores stock it. Looks like a very thin varnish. Dilutes the stain and makes it more transparent but doesn't make it watery like thinner. It will add a little amber to the color.
I reread and rethought your original post.
Since you like that particular color of the stain you already have, you might want to give this a try on a piece of scrap. Don't have much to lose really, but you'll need spray equipment for sure.
Stain the board, wipe it clean and then spray a light coat of the stain evenly on the surface in an attempt to achieve the semi-tranparent result you looking for. Just how much you can lay down in one coat without having that extra material crawl or "puddle" on the surface this way will vary from product to product. Depends what's in there for solvents and for binders. You may be restricted to very thin coats that you have to then allow to dry for 6 hrs or so, followed by a coat of Zinnser's Sealcoat to bind it down before adding any more color and then a bit more Sealcoat.
While another finish other than the dewaxed shellac may work for a sealer and binder, I think the Sealcoat has the best odds of working over whatever you have there, so long as you allow all the solvents it contains to evaporate before doing the sealing. And the Sealcoat will be ready for more color on top in say about an hour.
Depending on the contained solvents and binders in your stain, you may have to work on horizontal surfaces only to prevent the stuff from running on you. This means rotating the piece in question.
Whether or not you can add some of your stain product to some clear coat finish, depends also on how it's formulated and what's in there. Sometimes, yes........but more often, no.......with stain products off the shelf and intended to be used only as a stain.
Edit: I'm forever editing. I just realized that in my first post I said you need to use the universal colorant if you're intending finish coats other than lacquer. It was late and that isn't really true. You can use the base concentrates for staining and toning, followed by some Sealcoat and then you can put most any type of final topcoat on that, including oil-based polys which don't like to adhere the best to lacquer.
Knowledge is power, but only if applied in a timely fashion.
Edited 9/2/2004 9:20 am ET by GOLDHILLER