Staining black

[jabell]

Many years ago I fitted out a shop in pine that we did a white finish by mixing white undercoat and turps, applied by rags, followed up with estapol. Looked great.

Now my wife wants a bookcase stained up in black to match something from Ikea, and so I googled about and it was all Prooftint etc, expensive spirit based stains with reducers etc etc. Got out from the shed a can of black satin oil-based paint, mixed some in a tin with turps and ragged it on a scrap bit of pine, two coats. Looks great.

So what am I missing by not buying these ready made tints/stains? I know 'my' method cost nothing and the tints cost a lot, but what do they give me that the free method doesn't?
thanks
John

[mark david]

Hi John it is the "Big paint con" people go to Bunnings, Masters etc choose a paint colour they like, probably costs $100 a tin.The staff member picks up a cheap tin of base colour ads some cheap tints and voila! magically becomes "vanilla sunrise" or whatever bloody ripp-off in my mind and people are stupid enough to pay the silly prices for it?


The same applies to fancy woodstains and vile coloured varnishes.

By the way the cement colouring oxides make great paint, varnish, woodfiller additives.I use them all the time.

[jabell]

Hi John it is the "Big paint con"

By the way the cement colouring oxides make great paint, varnish, woodfiller additives.I use them all the time.

Many years ago I spent a few years in London, and with a mate took up paining houses to make a quid - a lot of quids actually. Our customers always wanted 'Sandersons' paint and not the other cheapo crap 'Crown', so we always bought the more expensive one. That is until one day our usual paint shop apologised that he had run out of the Sandersons labels, and would it be okay to put the cheapo Crown labels on the cans he was mixing up. We said fine, what's the difference anyway? "Oh, just the labels, the paint is the same, they just use overlapping colour schemes so that they are not seen to be exactly the same". ?????

The penny dropped, and I've never believed a damned thing a paint company has said ever since!

Re the cement colouring oxides, thanks for the tip!
cheers
John