Hello All,
I’ve gotten quite a bit of help here in how to finish the Arts and Crafts bed I’m building. Right now I’m convinced I want to fume for many reasons. The two biggest reasons I’m against a dye/stain combo is because dye can fade in sunlight (which this bed will be in partially from our bedroom window) and I don’t like how stain settles in the deep grain of this QS WO, even after a seal coat of shellac.
The piece to the far left is a control. The subsequent 4 pieces are cut from two different pieces of scrap. They alternate like this:
1. A 30min
2. B 1:00 hr
3. A 2:00 hrs
4. B 3:00 hrs
The two pieces from B have more flecking and are definitely a lighter tone of brown while pieces A are less figured but are a darker tone. The project is made up of these and many other boards so I guess now I’m trying to decide if this will look good together on a whole bed or if the colors will be too disparate. I also was thinking of using an amber or ruby shellac to give the piece a more red tone but I don’t think it will bring the different tones as a whole together any more. Any comments or suggestions welcome.
Replies
Overnight or even 24 hours is a more usual time for fuming. Try twelve hours. I like to get a little gray going. There is a limit to the effect, when all of the wood's tannins have reacted. I like to get there and then work back if I like to calibrate the colors that are most desirable.
How do you mean "work back to calibrate the colors?" I'm thinking again about water based dyes to bring the colors together but I really would rather not. I'm just worried about the color differences in the different pieces. Also, I'm not trying to go real dark.
How do you mean "work back to calibrate the colors?"
Well I mean for your testing you should take a sample as dark as it will go keeping track as to when the color quits developing. Then try one at half as much exposure and one at 3/4 of full exposure time. That way you should have a pretty clear indication of what your exposure time should be to get the color development that you desire.
You are worrying more than is warranted I have a book wherein the author had finished out an entire bank with oak moldings and furniture when they were informed by one of the managers that they needed to be at least one shade darker. Finish coats were already applied to thousands of feet of wood at that point and opening day was one weekend away. They solved the problem by fuming the entire building over the weekend and even through the finishes everything darkened just enough. The manager pronounced it perfect! George Franks is the author I believe... "Adventures In Finishing" was the title (as best I can remember). So wild variations are somewhat unlikely and minor ones easily dealt with... what's to worry about? (:-)
From "Stickley's Notes on Finishing" in the book by Joseph Bavaro, he states that "as a rule forty-eight hours is enough" to fume a project.
He sometimes applied the ammonia directly to a piece with a sponge to try to adjust the color a bit.
Another trick he used was to darken his lacquer and shellac solution with a small amount of stain and applied it to the lighter pieces.
"Kinky for Gov. of Texas"
Based on what I see, you are going to have to fumes the components unassembled; refume the ones that don't darken enough; assemble and hope you dont' need to sand or plane any joints, and then apply your topcoat. What I don't get is how you treat the panels that are made from jointed boards (unless there are none in this bed) that might not fume equally. I could be wrong, but I think if you substitute dye for fuming and then follow you same finishing schedule, you would have a better result. The only difference is that you would not be able to say that you had successfully executed a fumed finish. I personally would try the fuming on a smaller piece such as a table before you commit yourself to fuming the bed. Look at the new issue of FW magazine for what I mean.
EDIT: The problem for you using dyes is that you may not have an inventory of dye colors to experiment with, as I do. Those little bottles are not cheap! The Homestead Finishing site does have some formulas that you could look at. While you are at it, ask to speak with Jeff Jewitt by calling Homestead, and ask him for his advice on finishing qtr sawn white oak.
Edited 8/24/2006 11:36 am ET by Handrubbed
It won't be the end of the world if you have to do some "adjusting" to the color after fuming. In Gustav Stickley's book "Making Authentic Craftsman Furniture" he describes a workable finishing process, with the caveat that he really did it differently at the factory.
If you topcoat with amber or garnet shellac, you can darken lighter areas by brushing on additional coats. If you really need to move the color, add some aniline dye to shellac or lacquer and apply with a brush to the light areas before applying your topcoat.
I think the best looking fumed finish is actually a 3 step process to develop the right color. Fuming leaves it a little grayish, amber or garnet shellac warms it up, and then dark wax gives some contrast in the pores.
Bob Lang
http://www.craftsmanplans.com
This is just a thought but B1 is absolutely quartersawn so whatever you do will look different to those lengths which are riftsawn.
We can't have our cake and eat it too. The reason fuming is a thing of the past from the A&C era is that it yields a high degree of variation. A very bad thing in mass production. There are several methods to even out color in general and for me the most controllable method is toning using a detail gun. However I've never toned fumed QSWO oak. Toning defeats my attraction to fuming QSWO in the first place. The depth and tonality of the color being in the wood instead of on the wood and they way that makes the flake really pop is why I fume. Trying to go light only makes it tougher to get uniformity, generally the darker you go the more uniform the color. You can either embrace uniformity or variation. For my own stuff I like the variation. People that see it seem to really like it because it doesn't look like formica. For the 24 QSWO A&C chairs I've done commercially I've used two colors of Woodkote gell stain followed by topcoats of slightly tinted "warmed" Enduropoly and the customers were very happy with the results. Talk about consistent. The matching tables, desks, lateral files and credenzas were made and finished in a different shop by two other guys. Everything matched up amazingly well.
John O'Connell - JKO Handcrafted Woodworking
The more things change ...
We trained hard, but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams, we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization.
Petronious Arbiter, 210 BC
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