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15K views 13 replies 9 participants last post by  newTim 
#1 ·
This IS my first rodeo

A little arts and crafts on a Sunday afternoon. I've been wanting to try my hand at dyeing and tinting for a while so in typical New California Workshop style I jumped right in. In this round I'm using TransTint dyes from Woodcraft mixed in water. You can see my calculations written on the paper. I diluted about a half an ounce of tint into about 16 ounces of water. I just used bottled water and spilled out a little to approximate 16 ounces. I made up some samples from tiger maple sanded to 180. The first round is at the top closest to the tint. I immediately noticed that the lighter colors went on without much blotching. It seems the darker the color, the greater the blotching. The top row was applied with a foam brush and wiped off with a t-shirt rag. The bottom row was an attempt to avoid blotching. I used a clean t-shirt rag to apply the dye and wiped it off right away.

Its pretty clear I've got a lot to learn and am looking for any and all suggestions. Should be fun.

Bottle Liquid Bottled water Water Drinking water


Food Liquid Bottle Fluid Handwriting


Liquid Bottle Fluid Plastic bottle Handwriting


Product Textile Red Font Rectangle
 

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#2 ·
This IS my first rodeo

A little arts and crafts on a Sunday afternoon. I've been wanting to try my hand at dyeing and tinting for a while so in typical New California Workshop style I jumped right in. In this round I'm using TransTint dyes from Woodcraft mixed in water. You can see my calculations written on the paper. I diluted about a half an ounce of tint into about 16 ounces of water. I just used bottled water and spilled out a little to approximate 16 ounces. I made up some samples from tiger maple sanded to 180. The first round is at the top closest to the tint. I immediately noticed that the lighter colors went on without much blotching. It seems the darker the color, the greater the blotching. The top row was applied with a foam brush and wiped off with a t-shirt rag. The bottom row was an attempt to avoid blotching. I used a clean t-shirt rag to apply the dye and wiped it off right away.

Its pretty clear I've got a lot to learn and am looking for any and all suggestions. Should be fun.

Bottle Liquid Bottled water Water Drinking water


Food Liquid Bottle Fluid Handwriting


Liquid Bottle Fluid Plastic bottle Handwriting


Product Textile Red Font Rectangle
I have a project in mind that will use tints, it will be interesting to follow your progress. Some of the colours you are getting are pretty close to what I need, I may have to follow in your experimental footsteps.

Would shellacing the samples beforehand stop the tints from colouring the wood? I understand that shellac is often used to control blotching, so I was wondering how it would affect the colour?
 

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#3 ·
This IS my first rodeo

A little arts and crafts on a Sunday afternoon. I've been wanting to try my hand at dyeing and tinting for a while so in typical New California Workshop style I jumped right in. In this round I'm using TransTint dyes from Woodcraft mixed in water. You can see my calculations written on the paper. I diluted about a half an ounce of tint into about 16 ounces of water. I just used bottled water and spilled out a little to approximate 16 ounces. I made up some samples from tiger maple sanded to 180. The first round is at the top closest to the tint. I immediately noticed that the lighter colors went on without much blotching. It seems the darker the color, the greater the blotching. The top row was applied with a foam brush and wiped off with a t-shirt rag. The bottom row was an attempt to avoid blotching. I used a clean t-shirt rag to apply the dye and wiped it off right away.

Its pretty clear I've got a lot to learn and am looking for any and all suggestions. Should be fun.

Bottle Liquid Bottled water Water Drinking water


Food Liquid Bottle Fluid Handwriting


Liquid Bottle Fluid Plastic bottle Handwriting


Product Textile Red Font Rectangle
I bought a couple of bottles of the same dye but have not used them yet…The samples you did look good and I should try using mine after seeing your results.
 

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#4 ·
This IS my first rodeo

A little arts and crafts on a Sunday afternoon. I've been wanting to try my hand at dyeing and tinting for a while so in typical New California Workshop style I jumped right in. In this round I'm using TransTint dyes from Woodcraft mixed in water. You can see my calculations written on the paper. I diluted about a half an ounce of tint into about 16 ounces of water. I just used bottled water and spilled out a little to approximate 16 ounces. I made up some samples from tiger maple sanded to 180. The first round is at the top closest to the tint. I immediately noticed that the lighter colors went on without much blotching. It seems the darker the color, the greater the blotching. The top row was applied with a foam brush and wiped off with a t-shirt rag. The bottom row was an attempt to avoid blotching. I used a clean t-shirt rag to apply the dye and wiped it off right away.

Its pretty clear I've got a lot to learn and am looking for any and all suggestions. Should be fun.

Bottle Liquid Bottled water Water Drinking water


Food Liquid Bottle Fluid Handwriting


Liquid Bottle Fluid Plastic bottle Handwriting


Product Textile Red Font Rectangle
2 things you can try to minimize splotching - a wash coat (1# cut) of shellac and then sand off the raised grain or a thin coat of boiled linseed oil.
Have fun with your experiment.

Lee
 

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#5 ·
This IS my first rodeo

A little arts and crafts on a Sunday afternoon. I've been wanting to try my hand at dyeing and tinting for a while so in typical New California Workshop style I jumped right in. In this round I'm using TransTint dyes from Woodcraft mixed in water. You can see my calculations written on the paper. I diluted about a half an ounce of tint into about 16 ounces of water. I just used bottled water and spilled out a little to approximate 16 ounces. I made up some samples from tiger maple sanded to 180. The first round is at the top closest to the tint. I immediately noticed that the lighter colors went on without much blotching. It seems the darker the color, the greater the blotching. The top row was applied with a foam brush and wiped off with a t-shirt rag. The bottom row was an attempt to avoid blotching. I used a clean t-shirt rag to apply the dye and wiped it off right away.

Its pretty clear I've got a lot to learn and am looking for any and all suggestions. Should be fun.

Bottle Liquid Bottled water Water Drinking water


Food Liquid Bottle Fluid Handwriting


Liquid Bottle Fluid Plastic bottle Handwriting


Product Textile Red Font Rectangle
very kool. great information.
 

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#6 ·
This IS my first rodeo

A little arts and crafts on a Sunday afternoon. I've been wanting to try my hand at dyeing and tinting for a while so in typical New California Workshop style I jumped right in. In this round I'm using TransTint dyes from Woodcraft mixed in water. You can see my calculations written on the paper. I diluted about a half an ounce of tint into about 16 ounces of water. I just used bottled water and spilled out a little to approximate 16 ounces. I made up some samples from tiger maple sanded to 180. The first round is at the top closest to the tint. I immediately noticed that the lighter colors went on without much blotching. It seems the darker the color, the greater the blotching. The top row was applied with a foam brush and wiped off with a t-shirt rag. The bottom row was an attempt to avoid blotching. I used a clean t-shirt rag to apply the dye and wiped it off right away.

Its pretty clear I've got a lot to learn and am looking for any and all suggestions. Should be fun.

Bottle Liquid Bottled water Water Drinking water


Food Liquid Bottle Fluid Handwriting


Liquid Bottle Fluid Plastic bottle Handwriting


Product Textile Red Font Rectangle
I used the shellac trick to avoid blotching and it works REALLY well. :)

love those colours!
 

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#7 ·
This IS my first rodeo

A little arts and crafts on a Sunday afternoon. I've been wanting to try my hand at dyeing and tinting for a while so in typical New California Workshop style I jumped right in. In this round I'm using TransTint dyes from Woodcraft mixed in water. You can see my calculations written on the paper. I diluted about a half an ounce of tint into about 16 ounces of water. I just used bottled water and spilled out a little to approximate 16 ounces. I made up some samples from tiger maple sanded to 180. The first round is at the top closest to the tint. I immediately noticed that the lighter colors went on without much blotching. It seems the darker the color, the greater the blotching. The top row was applied with a foam brush and wiped off with a t-shirt rag. The bottom row was an attempt to avoid blotching. I used a clean t-shirt rag to apply the dye and wiped it off right away.

Its pretty clear I've got a lot to learn and am looking for any and all suggestions. Should be fun.

Bottle Liquid Bottled water Water Drinking water


Food Liquid Bottle Fluid Handwriting


Liquid Bottle Fluid Plastic bottle Handwriting


Product Textile Red Font Rectangle
I use trans-tint dyes on tiger maple all the time for my gunstocks. The two things that improve the look of the finished product is to start with wood that's sanded to a very fine finish. 320 grit or finer. Then use denatured alcohol to minimize raising the grain and don't even think about looking at the finish till you've sanded again with finer grain sandpaper and put on at least one coat of tung oil thinned with 50% thinner or mineral spirits. The oil pops the grain like you won't believe till you try it. Trifern has a bunch of projects that inspired my experiments. I usually start with black dye, sand almost all of it off, then use a light brown dye, sand till I like the colors, and finish with a very light golden yellow dye to highlight the rays of grain that run through the maple. Trifern has a blog post with details on how he dyes his projects.

You can also use Ritt dye that you get at the grocery store to experiment with dying. It's $2 a box for enough powder to tint a huge pile of wood. I use denatured alcohol instead of water with Ritt powder and filter it with a coffee filter because there will almost always be a few crystals of dye that don't disolve and make spots on the wood.
 

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#8 ·
This IS my first rodeo

A little arts and crafts on a Sunday afternoon. I've been wanting to try my hand at dyeing and tinting for a while so in typical New California Workshop style I jumped right in. In this round I'm using TransTint dyes from Woodcraft mixed in water. You can see my calculations written on the paper. I diluted about a half an ounce of tint into about 16 ounces of water. I just used bottled water and spilled out a little to approximate 16 ounces. I made up some samples from tiger maple sanded to 180. The first round is at the top closest to the tint. I immediately noticed that the lighter colors went on without much blotching. It seems the darker the color, the greater the blotching. The top row was applied with a foam brush and wiped off with a t-shirt rag. The bottom row was an attempt to avoid blotching. I used a clean t-shirt rag to apply the dye and wiped it off right away.

Its pretty clear I've got a lot to learn and am looking for any and all suggestions. Should be fun.

Bottle Liquid Bottled water Water Drinking water


Food Liquid Bottle Fluid Handwriting


Liquid Bottle Fluid Plastic bottle Handwriting


Product Textile Red Font Rectangle
Thanks all. I've been experimenting all week and will post an updated this weekend. I havn't yet tried the #1 cut shellac. Lots of videos and stuff touting it. Stay tuned…
 

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#9 ·
Guilt by association

I've heard that all learning is association. Well it is certainly true for me. I spent most of my shop time this weekend bouncing between research and experimentation. The more I experimented, the more the research made sense. And the more I researched, the better the experiments.

I played around with shellac as a sealer coat, and sanding back various colors in various layers. If something didn't look good I tried another color or tried to sand it off, or just turned the piece over. On the research side I've been following Ed's forum entry Issues with Water Based Aniline Dye. I watched a number of youtube videos by Charles Neil and various guitar and violin makers. And of course, I read and re-read Trifern's classic bog on how he colors turned vessel. I also watched The Woodwhisperer's You and Dye video. There is a ton of information available and now that I've tried my hand I am beginning to understand some of the techniques. Blotching remains an issue and I ordered some of Charles Neil's blotch control solution. I'm looking forward to giving it a try.

The weekend was not all work and my wife and I were able to take a trip today up to Fieldstone Labs north of Auburn CA to pick out our new buddies. They're five weeks old and we'll bring them home in three weeks. We're still looking for names!

Brown Rectangle Azure Textile Orange


Rectangle Wood Textile Orange Triangle


Colorfulness Paint Rectangle Purple Art


Colorfulness Rectangle Orange Wood Art


Rectangle Green Azure Textile Door mat


Dog Dog breed Carnivore Fawn Working animal
 

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#10 ·
Guilt by association

I've heard that all learning is association. Well it is certainly true for me. I spent most of my shop time this weekend bouncing between research and experimentation. The more I experimented, the more the research made sense. And the more I researched, the better the experiments.

I played around with shellac as a sealer coat, and sanding back various colors in various layers. If something didn't look good I tried another color or tried to sand it off, or just turned the piece over. On the research side I've been following Ed's forum entry Issues with Water Based Aniline Dye. I watched a number of youtube videos by Charles Neil and various guitar and violin makers. And of course, I read and re-read Trifern's classic bog on how he colors turned vessel. I also watched The Woodwhisperer's You and Dye video. There is a ton of information available and now that I've tried my hand I am beginning to understand some of the techniques. Blotching remains an issue and I ordered some of Charles Neil's blotch control solution. I'm looking forward to giving it a try.

The weekend was not all work and my wife and I were able to take a trip today up to Fieldstone Labs north of Auburn CA to pick out our new buddies. They're five weeks old and we'll bring them home in three weeks. We're still looking for names!

Brown Rectangle Azure Textile Orange


Rectangle Wood Textile Orange Triangle


Colorfulness Paint Rectangle Purple Art


Colorfulness Rectangle Orange Wood Art


Rectangle Green Azure Textile Door mat


Dog Dog breed Carnivore Fawn Working animal
Ignore…posting fail!!!
 

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#14 ·
This is a test... it is only a test...

I've learned a lot since doing this test, but I figure it might be beneficial to see some steps and learn from my trials. I've found some real good links, some of which are in the previous blog. I will provide a list of links and references in a later blog. For now here's a step by step test. Many more tests to come.

Prepped with 220 sanding & about #1 cut shellac, dyed black, sanded with about 120
Automotive tire Wood Grey Rectangle Flooring

Liquid Wood Fluid Bottle Paint


Add Yellow and sand
Green Wood Paint Rectangle Art


Wood Microphone Gas Rectangle Flooring

Add some orange, sand lightly about 220. Add some red, sand lightly about 220
Rectangle Paint Wood Art paint Art

Sand lightly at 320, coat with a blend of GF Top Coat & Naptha
Rectangle Wood Tints and shades Paint Wood stain
 

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