Woodworker's Journal 2011-35-Winter, страница 30

Colors To Dye For

Whether your go

color choices or dye could be the

l is grain clarity, blotch control, answer.

What is a Dye?

Dyes are organic colorants that dissolve in some solvent. That's not the same thing as pigments, which are ground-up chunks of color that are suspended in liquid. Suspended particles, like pigments, settle to the bottom of a container, but dyes do not. Imagine adding a bit of sand to a glass of warm water, and a bit of salt to another. The sand mixture would disperse when you stirred it, but eventually, the sand would settle to the bottom. The salt would dissolve and never settle to the bottom. Dye acts like that saltwater solution. The color dissolves into a translucent solution and never settles out.

Natural dyes have been around for ages, but most dyes we use today are synthetic. The first synthetic dyes were derived from coal tar in 1856 by an Englishman named Perkins, so historically speaking, they are fairly new.

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anything that is used to color raw wood. That's not to say you can't add color to wood that has a coat of finish already on it. You can. But that is called glaze, or shading or toner.

Chemical stains are compounds that react with wood to create color changes, like ammonia darkening oak. All other stains are liquids or gels that have some sort of coloring agent in them. As mentioned, there are two primary types of coloring agents used: pigments, which are ground-up particles of colored "dirt" suspended in liquid. (For more on pigment stains, see page 26.) In this article, I want to talk specifically about dye stains.

Mixing dye is as simple as adding powder or concentrate to the right liquid. Add more dye for a stronger solution and less for a weaker one.

ost off-the-shelf wood stains contain a combin-. - . ation of two different types of coloring agents: pigments and dyes. Pigments work best on ring porous woods, like ash or oak, while dyes work best on dense, close pore woods, like maple. Wouldn't it be nice if you could use each one separately to gain more control over your coloring options? Well, you can.

Defining Terms

Before we go any further, let's stop and define some terms, stain is

30 Colors To Dye For