Latest Project - Fumed Oak Table

Don’t know what that fumed is, will look it up. The project looks great!

-- mtnwild (Jack), It's not what you see, it's how you see it.

Fuming is a process that was used buy Gustav Stickley back in the early 1900’s. It is the act of releasing ammonia fumes around oak. Oak has natural tannons in it that darken when exposed to ammonia. They learned this from seeing horse stalls in barns darken from the ammonia released in horse urine.

Beautiful table, beautiful wood. Great work.
One question : can we use cleaning soda for wood fuming? (ammonia is difficult to find at my place)

Thanks for sharing with us.

-- masrol, kuala lumpur, MY.

Not sure. Never heard of cleaning soda. I heard you could use regular household ammonia for fuming but I tried it and after 4 day’s in the tent the color was not theat much darker. I purcahsed the ammonia from artchemicals.com and it is the strong 29% stuff.

Thanks for the art store’s name.

-- masrol, kuala lumpur, MY.

Thanks for that, very cool. The wood does look great that way. Probably have seen lots of it and never knew.

-- mtnwild (Jack), It's not what you see, it's how you see it.

I would love to see that table top in better lighting conditions …the lower shelf ilooks fantastic and I see you went with QS instead of flatsawn this time around : ) Did you happen to take any before and after fuming pix ?

-- You know you're getting old when you know the difference between you're (you are) and your (belonging to you) AND how to use them in a sentence .

Beautiful table. I had never heard of the fuming before but I will have to learn some more an try it some time.

-- Brian, Lebanon PA, If you aren’t having fun doing it, find something else to do.

Really nice looking table. I’ve wanted to try fuming but have not had a chance to try it. This makes me want to get a tent made!

-- You can't get a hug from Facebook.

Excellent work, looks great, thanks for posting.

-- "You get what you inspect, not what you expect"

Very beautiful table. Nice job on the QSWO.

-- Mike. mwurm13@yahoo.com

That ray flake really popped. I ought to experiment more with fuming….

-- http://newmissionworkshop.com

I tried fuming with regular household ammonia once too, but I was trying to fume Cherry. I needed to ‘age’ a part to match an existing piece. It didn’t seem to work all that great (I didn’t know it was a process only for oak) but when the piece fell into the bowl of ammonia I got some interesting colors. If I remember right the piece rotted in short order following that fiasco.

-- Junk is junk, at any cost.

As I understand it, the idea of fuming oak came from someone seeing oak barn timbers that had been exposed to horse urine. The constant exposure to it turned the timber that nice dark brown.

I don’t suppose cherry has much tannin in it which is what the ammona reacts with to create the color.

-- Until you spread your wings, you'll have no idea how far you can walk.

Nice table, good job with the fuming.

Some more info: The actual chemical name is ammonium hydroxide. You may also be able to find it at Large office supply or printing supply stores, ( used in blueprint copiers )
Another source is Fisher Scientific, you can order it.
http://www.fishersci.com/wps/portal/PRODUCTDETAIL?productId=665544&catalogId=29101&pos=5&catCode=SE_SC&fromCat=yes&keepSessionSearchOutPut=true&brCategoryId=null&hlpi=y&fromSearch=Y