Accidentally sent this to David Heim the first time.
Many antique walnut pieces I’ve seen have a rich brown color, sometimes a little reddish brown, and sometimes even with a hint of amber. Recent work I’ve seen in walnut is a too-dark, muddy “Hershey bar” brown, with charcoal tones. [Pardon my descriptions; I’m not an artist.] What accounts for these differences, and how can I reproduce the old finish appearance?
Replies
chemdad,
Antique walnut does have a lovely golden brown color.
What you are looking at I assume is new production furniture. Much of the modern stuff goes through some heavy handed coloring with pigmented wiping stains followed by toners which are sprayed on to even up a "look".
In most production pieces the boards are not carefully matched for grain and color. Quite the opposite. If it's solid wood, there are multiple pieces to deal with.
On larger pieces such as tables, the veneered surface can be treated differently but often isn't.
Add to that the influx of the tons of crappy furniture that is imported for the discount stores and what do you have........MUD.
A simple way to make a piece sing is to use a dye as a ground or base color. Whatever other steps you use afterwards, this base color gives it a glow.
A couple of schedules would be;
a medium yellow dye followed by an oil such as linseed or one of the wiping varnishes such as watco, minwax antique oil etc.
a lemon yellow dye followed by a brown amber dye followed by an oil or sealer coat of shellac.
Of course you can't be "anti color" as far as the wood goes with these treatments. Some will counsel absolutely no color, just oil etc.
Different strokes, that's all. Personally, I love playing with walnut. I do follow one fast rule; I let the wood tell me what it needs.
Peter
Thanks, Peter.A competing publication had an article in which reddish-brown dye was added to amber shellac. The color was "titrated" by counting the number of drops of dye per unit volume, then treating sample boards to find the desired color.In an approach like that, would one just use more coats over sapwood to equalize the color, or mix a separate batch of shellac with more dye specifically for sapwood areas? I reckon that would require a separate titration procedure on samples of sapwood.
chemdad,
There are always more than one way to skin the cat.
If I were to use that method I would still bring the color in at the base level first, seal with shellac and then add a tinted shellac to fine tune it. It might be easy enough for me to do so as I have worked a long time to develop my eye. By that I mean I know when to stop. That is a hard thing to explain.
You can use a tinted shellac but may find yourself over doing it.
If that is your plan, seal with shellac and then use your tinted shellac over the sapwood.
Personally, if I were to do it in stages like that I would;
Dye, seal, and then glaze. An oil based glaze would be easy to remove from the sealed surface. Just wipe it off before it dries and you can start over.
You can see the beauty in this. If you need to adjust the color, wipe it off ( it won't disturb the shellac sealer) and do it again.
You could remove a tinted shellac obviously, but you remove all of it. With the above method, you still have the shellac sealer there. That works for me as I try to keep the steps I use as forgiving as possible.
Like I said there are many ways to skin the sapwood.
Once dry, seal with shellac and proceed with your finish.
Peter
Thanks. I like your step-wise approach, to avoid overdoing it.
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