It worked!
I searched the forum and googled for more information, and wanted to say thanks to everyone with previous posts on this topic for some valuable guidelines and safety considerations.
Procedure was done in the detached garage. I used 10% household ammonia inside a Rubbermaid container to fume a picture frame. Fumed for 36 hours and upon removing from the chamber, clearly some changes had taken place. I finished with a couple of coats of Minwax Antique Oil and I’m pleased with the outcome. It gives me the confidence to do this again.
Lessons learned: Definitely must be done outside. Next time, breathing apparatus and mask, even for the 10%. For more predictable results, I need to do a series of test pieces. For uniform color I must use material from the same tree/slab/etc.
The top and bottom rail on the picture frame came from a different piece than the side rails. Consequently, the side rails, which have less ray, were considerbly darker, more of a Van Dyke brown. The top and bottom, nice quartered ray pattern, were a bit lighter, more golds and yellows.
I have a couple of works in progress, one a footstool from the plans published in Stickley’s The Craftsman magazine, and I think that might be next to the fuming chamber. ALL of the material on that piece came from a single piece of 8/4. Hope to have a digital camera and pix to share next time.
tony b.
Replies
Any chance you could post a picture of the result? I'm curious about the effect of the household ammonia.
Excuse my ignorance, but what is fuming and what purpose does it serve?
Thanks
T
Welcome to the forum and thanks for asking!
By exposing certain woods to ammonia fumes, a chemical reaction takes place within the wood changing its color. The ammonia reacts with the tannin, a naturally occurring compound in oak and certain other woods. The result in oak, depending on certain variables, is a range of possible colors from a golden oak with yellow highlights to a medium brown with a greenish hue to a deep, dark brown with a reddish hue.
By creating a chemical reaction within the wood, the color appears to be the naturally occurring color of the wood. "Transparent" is the word you'll hear most associated with the result...as opposed to pigment stains which go on top the wood, fill the pores and don't appear as transparent.
You can SAFELY achieve the same range of colors produced by fuming, and still maintain that "transparent" result, with any of a number of modern dyes currently available. Prior to the widespread use of stains and dyes, there were a number of ways to color wood using some common, and not so common, chemicals. You can visit Jeff Jewitt's Homstead Finishing site for an excellent summary on chemical coloring. In addition to that link, search this site for "ammonia fuming" and you'll find a number of very good forum discussions on the topic.
So why do this? For me, it has historical value. This is one way that manufacturers of furniture in the arts & crafts style achieved certain colors. I wanted to understand the process. It's another tool for me to master.
tony b.
Edited 3/4/2004 1:13:58 PM ET by YOTONYB
>> You can SAFELY achieve the same range of colors ... with any of a number of modern dyes ...
It's not that difficult to use household ammonia safely. I've fumed oak several times and barely smelled the ammonia. And the price is hard to beat.
Thanks. Very informative and most appreciated. Sounds interesting, I will dig further.
T
Uncle Dunc, it was one of YOUR posts in a previous discussion that I found helpful...thanks!
I got a good whiff of the 10% and it did send me scampering out the overhead door. Thankfully, the old lady down the block, wasn't barreling down the alley in her Lincoln at that moment.
tony b.
There's more than just historical value to fuming oak. There's really no other way to get the same effect. Even "transparent" dyes have two drawbacks: they stain the pores more than the wood, and the rays less than the ground; and they only penetrate a very shallow depth, so are prone to scratches. Fuming colors the wood evenly, the pores are not emphasized as they are with stains, and the figure is colored as well. And the reaction goes deep into the wood - at least 1/8", so you can't remove the color by scratching or sanding through.
I did a bunch of test pieces with various dyes and stains, and some test fumed pieces. The only way to avoid emphasizing the open pores was fuming. This can save you the effort of filling the pores. And it is easy to do. The big drawback is that different boards color differently, and sapwood doesn't color at all."Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler." A. Einstein
http://www.albionworks.net
>> The only way to avoid emphasizing the open pores was fuming. This can save you the effort of filling the pores.
Sounds like you are flooding the dye on and wiping it off. A much better technique is to mix the stain so that you get the color you want with a coat sprayed on just wet enough to flow out, with no wiping. Applied correctly, it's more of a problem to get enough dye into the pores of open grained wood than it is to keep from overstaining them. Takes care of the rays, too, although you can make them stand out if youwant to.
I never checked to see how far fuming penetrated wood, but I never have had any problem with minor scratches using dyes.
I'd wager I can match fumed wood with dyes close enough that you couldn,t tell them apart by looking; the giveaway would be the uniformity of color with dyes vs the wide variation when fuming unmatched wood.
Then there's the time factor; staining is a whole lot quicker.
Fuming is a time honored technique, but I really don't see that it has any advantages that justify the time and effort it takes, unless one is just doing it for fun or out of curiosity. Color fastness might be an issue, but modern metallized dyes are pretty stable, in my experience.
Michael R.
WW,
I don't have a spray system (nor any place to use one if I did!), but I tried every other technique I could think of: flooding, brushing, sponging, wiping, wiping thinned coats, etc. All of them resulted in the dye soaking preferentially into the pores of the oak.
I stand by my remark about the advantage of fuming going deeper into the wood. Run a scraper over a dyed piece - you get light patches. Run a scraper, even a couple passes with a plane, over fumed oak - no color change. And that other fellow is correct, you can do this right through an oil finish.
It would be interesting to try some sort of blind testing with fumed vs. spray-dyed pieces, and see if they can be distinguished (without scraping). If you have a spray system and can get the effect you want, then you're right: fuming wouldn't offer any advantage. For me it was the only way to get the right look."Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler." A. Einstein
http://www.albionworks.net
Sounds like you are flooding the dye on and wiping it off. A much better technique is to mix the stain so that you get the color you want with a coat sprayed on just wet enough to flow out, with no wiping. Applied correctly, it's more of a problem to get enough dye into the pores of open grained wood than it is to keep from overstaining them. Takes care of the rays, too, although you can make them stand out if youwant to.
That is my experience as well.
I have found that with alcohol-soluable dyes there can be an issue of the dye pulling away from the pores if too wet of a spray-only coat is applied - thus creating the same problem as wiping it on. One way to at least partially mitigate this is to reduce with Acetone or MEK instead. This with spraying as you describe it above, btw. Once I figured that out I stopped reducing alcohol dyes with alcohol. I much prefer to use MEK. Now I don't have to be quite as careful to not flood as I did when using alcohol. But, it's not a cure-all. Flooding is still an issue, even with MEK/Acetone. They're just more forgiving.
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"Rather fail with honor than succeed by fraud" - Sophocles.
You might try using a cheap fish tank bubbler to agitate the ammonia. Just stick the hose in the ammonia. I found that the silicone hose lasts longer and just use a stainless steel nut to weigh the hose down. A regular steel nut rusts and the regular hose gets less flexible from the ammonia. I also found you can put a coat of oil finish on and still get results. Fuming will actually get the color deeper in the wood than a stain. You can plane a piece of fumed oak and the fumed color will still be below the surface. There's an interesting story in a George Frank book of a bank interior that was too light a finish for the client and they fumed it overnight to darken it up. Stains and dyes are great but fuming has interesting possibilities. We fumed a table that had copper boots on the legs and the copper turned green from the ammonia so there are other elements of surprise with hardware as well.
Where do I get that Stickley magazine you were talking about. I like the arts and crafts furniture and like making it. I didn't know anything about the mag.
Jim
Original copies of The Craftstman are rare. You'll occasonally find them on eBay. There's also a listing on eBay from someone offering some issues on compact disc. I have no idea of the quality of the CD-ROM.
Dover published a book called Making Authentic Craftsman Furniture which was a compilation of some of the projects featured in The Craftsman magazine. Be forwarned...as in the original issues of the magazine, measurements are incomplete and sometimes incorrect.
Robert Lang, who posts here in the forum, has a couple of books called Shop Drawings for Craftsman Furniture. Unless you have access to a collection of original furniture, his books might be the most comprehensive resource for measured drawings of Stickley furniture.
tony b.
Thank you Tony.
Jim
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