>I'm getting ready for the show my Dad and I will be putting on this July, and I took a beautiful cherry bowl, turned as nicely as I know how, and tried something new - the raw pink cherry was so pretty, I thought I'd try to bleach the bowl, and keep the lighter hues. So, I bought some regular bleach like Mom would use in the washing machine, and rubbed it all over the bowl... Now it looks terrible! Kinda of a sick grayed out green color - what can I do? How should I have gone about bleaching this cherry? Thanks guys.
>You have learned a valuable lesson. NEVER use household Chlorine Bleach on a piece of wood, because you will get just the results that you have described.
There are two things you can do; either stain or dye the wood whatever color of your choosing, or work with what is there.
If you still want to bleach the wood, rinse the surface several times with cold water. Let it dry again for several days. When there is no longer a Clorox smell to the wood, use a commercial wood bleach on it and hope for the best. The 2-part wood bleach by Kleen-Strip, and sold at Lowes and Home Depot, will do a good job if you follow the directions.
Or, you can sand away all of the surface wood that you have. With a piece of Cherry, the bleach may not have soaked into the wood deep enough that it can't be sanded out. Use powersanding and start at 60-grit and work your way back up through the grits to where you were before. Then take after it with the Klean-Strip wood bleach.
Cherry isn't the best candidate for bleaching, but it is possible to bleach the Cherry to near-white with several applications. The wood in the photo is Cherry, and that took about 6 applications of the bleach, with every one of them sitting overnight. If you are in a hurry, trying to bleach Cherry is not something that you would want to do.
>Rule no 2. Never try something new on a special piece of wood.
I tried to get that beautiful just sanded color from a cedar bowl. I thought I would bleach it lighter and then the finish would bring it back to that beautiful color. Sound familiar. As soon as I put the bleach on the bowl cracked into 5 pieces. I think the bleach penetrated so rapidly that the wood expanded at uneven rates and blew up.
If you can save a piece of the wood and sand it just as you would the final piece. Then try whatever technique you want on that scrap.
I've used household bleach wiath some success but it doesn't work as well as commercial wood bleach. Wood bleach isn't very expensive so I'd go with that. Every wood I've bleached performs differently. A good example is Osage Orange. It turned gray. I mean really gray. Not what I expected at all. Many other woods will do something unexpected as well. test,test, test.
This is a good idea on finishing techniques as well. I can't tell you how many pieces I screwed up before I started testing on scrap.
>Thanks Jon and Russ; I've learned my lesson for sure... I had heard that cherry was a hard candidate for bleach, so I'm afraid I really, really soaked that bowl - boy am I mad at myself! Sure wish I had asked you guys first. I tried a little bit of sanding, and it didn't even begin to lighten the sick color: the bowl is thick, so I could re-turn it, but I think I may try some other surface treatment, coloring, something. Thanks for the info.
