I made a bedroom dresser from Hard Northern Maple. I would like to finish the dresser in a red mahogany finish. What is the best method to use to bring out the grain and yet achieve a blotch-free appearance. I have previously tried to finish the Hard Northern Maple with a dark finish but the results looked like like an old crate. I would appreciate any suggestions that would produce an attractive piece after many hours of actual woodworking to produce this dresser.
Thank you again in advance for your time and talent to answer this question.
Replies
To get dark shades on maple requires that you start with a dye. By hand, this means a water soluble powdered aniline dye. You adjust the shade by how concentratedly you mix the solution. This will establish your base color.
Then you can lightly seal this with shellac--say 1 lb. cut as a wash coat--and apply a pigment only stain in a dark color. To be sure of pigment only use either a gel stain, or mix your own using fresco powders, japan colors, or artists oil paint mixed with a little oil and varnish, thinned enough to be workable. This adds considerable depth to the appearance. You shouldn't need to paint this own, apply and wipe as the directions would call for. You have already gotten the necessary darkness from the dye.
If you had spray equipment, you might do this a bit differently, with the tinted toner coats, but I assumed no spray equipment.
After this dries you are ready for top coats. I'd use a non-poly varnish. Behlen Rockhard would be high on my list. If you want a wiping varnish Waterlox is good, or you can thin other oil based varnish to wiping consistency.
Thank you for responding so quickly to my question and for spelling out the details. I will do as what you have written. I'm looking forwarding to good results.
In addition to Steve's advice I will add that you should try this out on some of your scrap maple first to make sure the effect is what you want.
wku,And to add to Steve's and Ben's advice, staining maple to a dark tone is like trying to swim upstream. It's actually necessary to really hide the character of the wood to get there.To state the obvious, maple, a light wood begs to be finished that way. I understand your goal is to achieve the color you want, starting with the completed piece as constructed. But if it's darker wood furniture that you like, you'll get more pleasing results if you build using wood close to the color you like your furniture to be. Maybe cherry, actual mahogony or walnut.Good luck with the project!Rich
Edited 12/6/2008 8:28 am ET by Rich14
That is excellent advice!!
If you are leery about using water-based dyes on wood you could go the NGR route. NGR stands for non grain raising and is a solvent based stain(usually alcohol) and tends to be less of a hassle to work with. Tends is the operative words here as any stain that radically darkens a wood tends to have issues. NGR stains are used in the furniture industry exclusively to radically darken wood. I always spray NGR stains and never have had an issue with blotching. I have not applied it with a rag so that may present some of its own problems. You can get NGR stains at http://www.mohawk-finishing.com/default.asp they refer to them as ultra-penetrating stains. Their wiping stains are blotch free, but don't get quite as dark. Mohawk makes excellent products and are used by industry more then hobbyist. General Finishes makes a water-based stain (dye) that is not supposed to raise the grain (HaHa). The best advice you have gotten is to try all of this on scrap wood that is the same as your project.
The operative word for using NGR dye is spraying. If you have facility with spraying that is a good choice. By hand, the best you can do is to dilute the concentrate with retarder, and move really quickly. By hand, I much prefer the water soluble dye powder, applied copiously so that the concentration of the dye, not the evenness of application determines the darkness.
The dye can achieve quite dark colors without obscuring the wood grain. Of course, you can only achieve mahogany color, it will never look like mahogany, though you could emulate rural colonial cabinetmakers who mahoganized wood like cherry or maple (even curly maple) by very heavy stain (call it paint) that was then grained with a dark glaze to simulate cherry figure. Very few of the 18th examples can be found with that original finish. It didn't really look all that good, and the 19th c. restorers stripped in off with abandon, which is why you do see maple and cherry secretaries and highboys now, many of which have traces of "old red paint" in the obscure recesses.
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