Using Chemical Stains By Allison Ryan At Isnare.com Ezine Articles

Brushes, preferably of the type called rubber set, are generally used in applying stains to wood. For coarse woods you need rather stiff bristles to force the stain down into the open pores. Strong alkalies and some of the acids may affect the bristles and soon ruin a brush, or the iron in a tin-bound brush may cause trouble, particularly when used with tannic acid.

Some of the alkalies in common use that affect brushes to some extent, especially when used in strong solution, are potassium hydroxide, ammonia, sodium hydroxide, and the carbonates. A brush cannot be used with any of the strong acids. Weak acids in common use, such as tannic acid and pyrogallic acid, can be applied successfully with a rubber-set brush.

The brushes should be washed clean with water and allowed to dry when not in use. Brushes made of vegetable fibers instead of bristles can be used in staining wood. The easiest type of furniture to stain would be a wooden table, or something like wooden bar rails and curtain rails.

When a sponge is used in applying a chemical stain, your hands are apt to become badly stained, or your skin may be eaten out in tender spots such as the backs of the fingers and under the nails. You can you’re your hands with cylinder oil or some other mineral oil, vaseline, or similar heavy grease, may be in such a manner as to protect them from weak acids or alkalies when using a sponge to apply stains.

You do have to prepare the surface of the wood before you apply chemical stains in much the same way as you would for water staining. All glue must be carefully removed, or light spots will appear about or under the adhesive.

Staining your furniture corner guards and wall corner guards can make your wall protection into something fashionable and artistic, if done correctly.

You can obtain a color very similar to that of fumed oak and very much like that produced on white oak by fuming with ammonia on certain varieties of oak, chestnut, mahogany, gum, pine, and some other woods, by preparing the surface with a tannic-acid or pyrogallic-acid solution, and later on giving a coat of fixed alkalies in an aqueous solution instead of fuming.

The procedure is as follows:

• Ease the grain by sponging it with water. Allow to dry, and then re-sand.

• Coat the wood with No. 1 solution, made up of 1/2 oz. tannic-acid powder in one quart of water or 1/3 oz. pyrogallic acid powder in one quart of water. (The solutions may
be mixed in these proportions in any quantity.) Allow the wood to dry.

• Sand lightly with No. 000 sandpaper.

• Apply a coat of No. 2 solution, made up of:
o1 quart water
o1 oz. bichromate of potash
o1/2 oz. caustic potash

• When dry, rub with diluted linseed-oil, made up of:
o1 part boiled linseed-oil and
o3 parts turpentine

On white oak the above procedure will produce a color almost identical with that obtained by ammonia fuming. It is very important, however, that each of the two solutions shall be thoroughly worked into the wood.

A stiff, rather coarse, rubber-bound bristle brush is best. On porous woods, such as oak, the stain solutions may not be forced well down into the open pores unless the brush is kept quite wet, and applied with vigorous strokes lengthwise of the grain. Door panels are simple, but wooden door toppers and the more intricate door accessories can be difficult, if there are many crevasses.

Unless care is taken in applying the solutions, many light specks will show in the open pores where the solutions did not penetrate properly. Stains produced by acids and fixed alkalies penetrate about as deeply as water stains, while those obtained by the fuming process with ammonia are better in that they enter into the wood much more deeply.

A slightly different but pleasing color can be produced on many woods by substituting for the No. 2 solution a mixture of about one ounce of bichromate of potash to the quart of water. The latter solution seems to be more efficacious when applied quite warm. A lighter tint of brown can be obtained by using part carbonate of potash instead of all bichromate of potash in the solution.

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