Burnt Timber/Charcoal Effect????

[rubbit]

Hi Guys,

Found this the other day and wondered if anybody knows how to achieve this. I've got an old beat up chair that need some loving and thought i might give this a go if i can find out how????

http://www.yankodesign.com/images/de...26/frene_1.jpg

[tea lady]

Ya just go at it with a blow torch I think. Have hose handy if it gets properly alight. Dunno what you finish it with after that? Spray laquar perhaps. Or varnish of some kind.

[rsser]

Yes, wot TL said.

But timbers vary a lot in how the come up with scorching. Some will just burn. Some will just smoulder and crack. No guarantees.

PS Experiment.

You can try to blacken, then hit it with a rotary wire brush, then apply an ebonising solution.

[rsser]

Here's an eg of the last procedure with a variation.

There was enuff ingrained soot to allow 2 coats of orange shellac to turn it black near as dammit

It's Fraxinus; you can see the cracks

[ubeaut]

Used to make a lot of Spanish style, Burnt furniture many years ago and used Oxyacetylene to burn the timber and sculpt it. Burns very quickly and doesn't harm the timber nearly as much as a blow torch or regular gas which burn a lot slower.

Soft timbers will lose the crackled finish as shown in the pics but will give a beautiful weathered, raised grain finish. Hard woods will do something similar unless you allow the timber to actually catch fire and burn for a while which is what apears to have been done in the pic.

You need to brush off any lose chared timber and clean off all dust before finishing. White shellac, a number of coats will also help to hold the surface together and give basically the same finish as in the pics. Might need to put a bit of lamp black, universal tint, in the final coat ot two to get a complete black if there is any colour variation.

By the way that timber definitely isn't Australian as the chair was made in Italy and is nost likely olive or some other European timber. Most Australian timbers will respond differently to that in the pics, so do as rsser suggests and experiment.

Hope this is of some help.

Cheers - Neil