staining end grain uniformly

agree...

David Weaver

..same experience - just a contest to get uniformity and similar absorption.

micronized pigment makes uniform color-take much easier, too. even without the perfection in grain (sanded, planed and burnished grain takes on about the same amount of color as long as the pigment is dense enough in the solvent to keep solvent from soaking in too deeply).

But the amount of work that it takes to get the end grain to look the way you show it will probably be too much for some.

assuming padding?

David Weaver

Assuming this is with your preferred method of padding color on a bit dry instead of flooding?

not so much work as discipline

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

At each sanding grit one must persevere until all the surface looks the same luster, with no spots duller than the rest. Took about 5 minutes per post end.

Starting with the hand planed surface cuts the sanding a lot. One soon knows if the blade is sharp. If not, planing end grain becomes a struggle. And the 80/20 rule holds. 80% of time on first grit.

Re: assuming padding?

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

yes padding but not dry. More like padding shellac. Squeeze stain from the rubber as needed to keep surface "damp".

agree...

David Weaver

...this is a technique that someone has to get results from by just doing it. Too dry, and some of the grain doesn't get stained and it's garish. Too much and it soaks in.

but it's the only way I apply stain because it's the only way I know of that you can prevent disasters and get really even color application (the reference to shellac is fairly good - if shellac color in a french polish isn't a really good match to the base wood, then one has to be careful to get it applied evenly, too).

Laziness led me to this technique staining floors years ago - it works a treat and doesn't take long to master.

Re: not so much work as discipline

David Weaver

that perseverance is the discipline part to me!! Learning a new method and nailing it is the interesting part. Doing it 50 times later and paying attention is sometimes pretty hard!

I have met a person or two who thinks sanding is zen, though, and loves to go above and beyond with it more than they like woodworking in general.

Re: staining end grain uniformly

Barry Irby

One thing I have found that helps is to sand the end grain one grit higher than the side grain. If you sand to 180 on side grain, sand the end grain to 240.

I have got to practice my hand plane skills. I am MUCH better at sharpening than I once was and that helps.

I find the opposite

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

I am nearly burnished enough at 100 grit to prevent over staining.

bill mentioned this on the HT side..

David Weaver

..about how it would be done with hand tools, so I did a piece (this wasn't a great idea as this is a turning block that's sat under my metal vise for ages, and it was full of metal).

micronized pigment stain followed with a quick rub of shellac and linseed oil as a lubricant. The liquid is just minwax stain (the micronized pigment overpowers it, it just becomes a carrier or stain base).

This is done without sanding or scraping and the virtue of the shellac rub done on this is first, I would finish it with shellac, and second, the oil in the stain serves to make shellac application easy and then you have a dry surface in a hurry and can continue rubbing if you want.

In case it looks like the wood isn't really changed in color on the end grain, notice on the side that it's half sap and half heart - the coloring on the end grain takes care of hiding that.

Dents are there as I didn't handplane all of them out (they wouldn't be there if I handplaned to the mark.

Total time handplaning the side and top was only a couple of minutes (because it included stopping and resharpening thanks to metal resident in the wood).

sometimes, I think we believe that this stuff is only made doable because of modern purchaseable stuff, but this is how I would do a larger project next time. The last one I did, I planed and scraped and then sanded thinking it would make the color better for the micronized pigment stain.

Here's two test pieces, one is sanded and one is planed with no sanding following hand planing. Can you tell which is which? If you did this with minwax can stain, they would be drastically different.

https://i.imgur.com/psUXnUJ.jpg?1 (The wood is cherry, also) The stain on the cherry piece above should be this color but the artist color has dried into a cake in the can so that's the end of that.

https://i.imgur.com/319ewry.jpg?1

( I do believe the first one was sanded as I vaguely recall that the two lines in the middle of it are due to not fully sanding out a scraper mark or something).

What concentration of pigment is in the stain?

well, I couldn't tell you at this point ..

David Weaver

...because it's dried,and most of the pigment is bound in the brick.

The reddish brown stain on the two test pieces is 8 oz of artists color (ronan?) in 24 oz of minwax stain, which more or less just becomes a base as it's totally dominated by the artist color.

Super easy. pigment is so dense that you don't really have to do anything to apply it other than pad it on like you're already used to. tiny particles stick to a burnished surface the same as sanded.

(that said, what I applied here is very weak, mostly liquid as the brick of pigment settled to the top and dried - it's only pure luck that it actually looks like cherry (heart) in the sap on the endgrain - it should be much more dark reddish brown).

Re: well, I couldn't tell you at this point ..

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

What you are staining with is the dye in the Minwax. I wondered at the color the sap became. Can't get sap to stain much with pigment.

My stain recipe is 12% by weight artist pigment in uncolored stain base solvent.

I thought I remembered...

David Weaver

that you were the one who pointed me to artist pigment.

Yes, some of that may be base stock color, but it's sort of a vomit brown and it should be a reddish gunstock color.

I looked at the two open cans of ronan - they're burnt sienna and raw umber (four ounces approx of each.

I like the color density for planed wood - if you have any excess, it sits on the wood and can be moved and used elsewhere instead of penetrating.