Staining Hard Maple

[jeff...]

Jeff,

Can you explain about toners? I am not familiar with them. I just tried anything I could find in finishing books or think of. A woodworker down the street from me was the one that told me about the Zar. He said that Minwax used to be similar to the Zar about twenty years ago.

I forgot to mention earlier that wood conditioner did not help me with the hard maple - it actually made it worse.

Tomorrow night I'm going to install the ff and doors. I'll keep everyone posted.

Amy toning is "basically" the same principle as staining but you don't change the color of the wood. It's applied in between finish coats instead.

Actually I'm going to say something I might regret. But you can actually make your own wood stain any color you like, for pennies on the dollar with mineral spirits and oil based artist colors from walmart or arts craft store. But I don't stain wood so I don't use this.

But you can also take the same oil based artist colors and mix in with your finishing medium and change the tone of your finish, when you do this go easy on the mixing you want the wood to show through, so very little toner is all thats needed, to much and the finish could get a muddy look. with just a little color change in the finish you get a uniform color and don't have to worry about staining the wood. With a set of 6 earth tone artist colors (YELLOW OCHRE, VAN DYKE BROWN, BURNT SIENNA, RAW SIENNA, BURNT UMBER and RAW UMBER) plus BLACK and WHITE you can mix up any color on earth. If you want to go man made colors then add add BLUE, GREEN and RED. If you can find the pigmented dry powders instead of the oils they mix a lot easier in a finishing medium. A artist color wheel can help guide you in mixing, but soon you won't need it, you'll learn that a little RAW SIENNA and a pinch of BLACK will make that cinimon color your customer was looking for.

Keep in mind this is my 2 cents worth only.

Thanks

 

[adowden]

Thanks so much for the explanation, Jeff. That is really interesting. If I ever get caught up on all my projects, I will have to try it.