wenge stain on tassie oak

[gabacus]

hello all,

i am building a bed at the moment out of tassie oak and i am having a little trouble with finding the right stain.

i am after a dark chocolate colour (like a wenge stain)

i have had a look at the commercial stains and the closest i could get is walnut (spirit) stain, which isnt close really...

i have seen a wenge "paste" which is a turps based stain but i am worried about it falling out of the grain (not that i want to fill the grain anyway).

i would love to find a water based stain that will do the job but am having a really difficult time sourcing it.

any advice you guys may have would be greatly appreciated.

i am alos considering ebonizing the tassie oak. any thoughts on how to do that (i dont really have time to do the rusty nails thing... :S)

cheers,

gabacus

[ravlord13]

G'Day Gabacus,
Tyr HAYMES paints, They carry a lot of hard to get color stains.
I was after Tas Blackwood stain and they were the only company that had it, all the rest told me to use wallnut.
Give them a call or try thier web site.
Catch ya
Andrew

[munruben]

Jarrah stain is pretty dark if its anything near to the colour you want. I have also been told that leather dye works very well but I have never tried it.

[ubeaut]

You could chemically dye the timber with a water and potassium bichromate or a condys crystals. Should work a treat on Tas oak. You can also use liquid nightmare (the vinegar, steel wool thing) which should also work a treat on Tas oak. Jim Carroll (03 5251 3874) should have some commercially made UV stabilised stuff on hand.

Or you could just add some black stain to the walnut and give it a go with that, Preferably use a water stain or dye unless you're using a water based finish over the top then you'll need a spirit stain or dye.

Whatever you do make sure you test it on a piece of scrap that has been sanded to the same degree as the rest of the project. You will also notice the colour will in most cases deepen even more when finish is applied over the stain.

Polishers Handbook has the info on making the chemical dyes and thee rest.

Cheers - Neil

PS Should be no reason why turpentine based stain or paste filler would fall off the Tas oak so long as you apply it correctly.

[gabacus]

Hi guys,

thank you all very much for the feedback.

ravlord13, i tried haymes but the local rep had no idea what i was going on about so i gave up.

munruben, the jarrah stain is not the colour i am after. i love the colour of jarrah, and i would have used solid jarrah, but unfortunately it does not match the panel that i want to include in the bed.

ubeaut, i gave jim a call and he was very helpful. i bought some the the solution suggest and will test it out when it arrives.

i ended up going to bunnings today and bought some of the wattyl gel stain (sorry, i called it a paste). it is a little tricky to use but it will do the job. my main concern is when you wipe off the excess its relatively easy to pull the stain out of the grain.. and i was not using a lot of pressure and yes, i was going with the grain. i think its just one of those things you have to get the hang of.

[RufflyRustic]

Jarrah stain is pretty dark if its anything near to the colour you want. I have also been told that leather dye works very well but I have never tried it.

Leather Dye does work well on timber. I've used my leather dyes a few times to great effect. The ones I get are water-based, so I had no problems with them under shellac or wipe on poly.

cheers
Wendy

[bucket1]

Cabots do a dark brown oil stain called chestnut. May be of some interest?

[jr french]

easy one mate use washing soda $2 from supermarket ,half a cup 2 half a bucket of boiling water ( little amoinia if u have it ) and wash it on even it out and reapply until the colour is as dark as u need .or just use dark chocolate stain we use paintec for that.

[KorDes]

Best method I found to get colours I wanted was to mix them together. Mixed a dark walnut colour with some black and got a rich deep brown, almost black but still retaining that rich brown that shows up in the grain.

[martrix]

Mirotone make a satin called "Wenge".

[bandd]

Gabacus'
I might be a bit late, but ubeaut has a good piont,I made a double bed for my daughter out of pine and stained it with condy's crystals scarded hell out of me when I first seen the colour, but it fades to a beutiful red bronze colour (fades quick) but 3 coats almost made it look like teak, problem is any blemish or bruse shows up as you know with pine if anything bumps it, it will mark it. good luck
ps:A good cold pot of tea is another good stain to use as your sanding your timber to take out any lighter patches.
baz