I am building a Windsor chair in which all parts will be black walnut, except the spindles. Walnut, even carefully rived and shaved on grain, isn’t strong enough for a spindle that goes down to 3/8″ at the top. Instead, I am using reliable white oak.
The chair will be oiled and waxed. Given this, the white oak spindles will stand out badly. I could make spindles out of hickory for a dark/light contrast, but would rather use white oak and make its color look like black walnut (I know the grain will not match).
So with the white oak:
I could stain. I could dye. I could fume (and then stain or dye). I could paint. etc.
Anyone with any good ideas or experience?
Any thoughts are appreciated.
best,
James
Replies
For a consistent dark color on white oak, dye is your friend and stain is not. I use TransTint dyes, mixing them in alcohol. You will have more options for adjusting the color than fuming, and less hassle. You can lessen the color contrast between the two woods, but no dye or stain on another wood will give you the beautiful color variation of walnut (at least if it has not been steamed before being kiln dried.)
While it is usually best practice to make filler a bit darker than the surrounding wood, in this case I would consider first making the dye color a bit lighter to see if that works best. Your goal is to make the colors of the wood compatible, not identical. Try different things and see what suits your eyes.
White oak and walnut complement one another quite well to my eye. That said, some experimentation with dyes and stains will likely yield a respectable match. Make sure you fill the oak grain first if you want to approximate the surface of walnut.
I have made several chairs with 3/8 inch spindles (on top, 1/2" on bottom) and have not run into any problems (perhaps I should say "yet"). I do understand your concern for this, and would not fault your decision to use Oak instead. I agree with using dye first, perhaps augmented with stain. Something I have not done, but may be helpful is the use of dark wax to blend everything together at the end.
Walnut has a wide range of color. If you are not staining or dying the Walnut some variations in the oak might compliment that. I've noticed fuming seems to impart more "highlights" so to speak. You could try this on a small scale to see if the color gets close.
Good luck.