I picked up a bunch of Transtint dyes and made some samples of each color. My goal is to see how each color would come out when darkened with a stain using Jeff Jewitt's approach. The samples are on red oak.
Here's my color samples.
Each piece was sanded to 180, wiped down with water, left to dry overnight, sanded the fibers lightly with 220, then dyed. After they dried overnight, I sprayed a thin coat of 1# shellac on them, left them dry, sanded lightlty with 400 and then coated some with watco dark danish oil and some with varithane dark walnut gel stain. Some of them look good, but some of them still have the white specs in the grain. Where did I go wrong? Was the shellac coat too thin to hold the stain/oil?
Here's my color samples.
Each piece was sanded to 180, wiped down with water, left to dry overnight, sanded the fibers lightly with 220, then dyed. After they dried overnight, I sprayed a thin coat of 1# shellac on them, left them dry, sanded lightlty with 400 and then coated some with watco dark danish oil and some with varithane dark walnut gel stain. Some of them look good, but some of them still have the white specs in the grain. Where did I go wrong? Was the shellac coat too thin to hold the stain/oil?