even more vinegar stain

[caliber45]

You guys reminded me about the year-old jar of vinegar & iron scraps I keep "refreshing," so I decided to try it on a scrap of nicely striped curly maple. The first coat came out gray, and then the next two or three got browner and browner. I rubbed it back a bit, and realized that the "stripes" were nicely darkened. Then I (don't tell the HC folks I did this . . .) applied one coat of orange aniline dye. I think the results are gorgeous. No more aqua-fortis & heat for me. Vinegar stain is SO much easier. -- paulallen, tucson az

[Harnic]

Sounds good Paul, I'll have to try some too!  I hate using the traditional acid type... too !@*%&@ hard on the skin!

[bgf]

I believe there is something in the air, because I have my own batch brewing.  Currently comes out gray, and I couldn't find the peroxide I thought I had , but the figure jumps out with no muddy look, so I'm going to do more brewing and testing. 

[B. Hey]

Hey Paul .. Would you care to share "specifics"? I've been playing with this concoction for a few months and have yet to get results other than muddy gray, no matter what ratio or number of coats. Any info is appreciated ... I REALLY want to make it happen. Thanks .. Bill Hey

[satwel]

caliber 45

My vinegar stain also turns maple gray. How much time elapsed between coats? Did you apply heat at any point?

Thanks

[Stophel]

I've never had any luck with vinegar/iron stain, myself.  I guess I'm just not holdin' my mouth right.

[caliber45]

Nothing very scientific. I used cider vinegar (6%?) and water -- about 1/3 vinegar, 2/3 water, and snipped up some short lengths of a rusted roll of wire I had forgotten under my (outdoor) workbench, a couple rusted hunks of 1/2-inch square, solid "wrought iron" -- I think it's steel -- some steel filings  and sawing detritus from hardware store strap steel I use for tangs, used OOOO steel wool -- just anything I could find. And I'd add more vinegar and water as the liquid evaporated. After my initial gray results, I'd about given up on the idea, but after reading rolfkt's comments about multiple coats, I tried that, and got brown vs. gray, and darker each time. No heat applied. For my test, I didn't even bother to strain the liquid: just dipped a Q-tip through the sludge on top and applied it. Now that I know it works, I'll strain the stuff. -- paulallen, tucson az

[caliber45]

Bill -- Time between coats for my test piece varied from a couple of hours to a day. Didn't seem to make any difference. -- paulallen, tucson az

[B. Hey]

Thanks, Paul. You mentioned something I haven't tried .. vinegar/water mix. Guess I'll head downstairs and brew another batch  . Take care .. Bill

[A.Merrill]

    A few months back when I first saw a post on vinegar stain, somebody said to use old metal because it had more iron in it, like old barbwire.  Me and my wife went for a ride in the country the other day and I found some, it is very old wire, you can bend it an it will break, just about all rust.  SO, I want to know will old barbwire work? Cider vinegar or white vinegar? Straight or thinned with water? Glass jar or plastic jar? Lid on or off? Or is there so Meany diffrent ways it doesn't matter? Sorry for all the questions, but I'm getting ready to start a batch and want to clear things up. Thanks AL

[Paddlefoot]

There is quite a lengthy old string on this if you search the archives. Long John gives the chemical explanation as to how and why it works and so on. I have not heard of anyone adding water before. I had the blue stain blues for the longest time and just let my stuff sit for several years. I tried it on a whim and found it gave a nice brown without recoating (though the color gets better if you do). I made some more stain using cheap, white, store brand vinegar and a cast iron finial for a decorative iron fencepost. Cost about $.89 for the iron and made great stain in about two weeks. It does appear to make a difference what is in the metal. I made a batch with the same vinegar at the same time, both in quart glass jars but using a rusty railroad spike for the iron. The batch with the spike makes the blue-black color right now but you can see some brown highlights trying to show through. My first batch, the three year old stuff is mostly rust from an old Lodge dutch oven that got left out in the rain. I don't know when that batch got to the point where it went from blue-black to brown but it was very discouraging for quite a while.

[caliber45]

Al --I'm gonna quit after this one, since I suspect everyone's getting tired of seeing it. But since you asked: I used (appx.) 1/3 cider vinegar, 2/3 water; glass jar; loose lid (to keep out the copious amounts of sawdust in my shop). I put in bits of anything that appeared to be rusting enthusiastically. In fact, I noticed that a tall, empty can that once contained Dole pineapple juice, and which I had filled with water to cool metal parts that got hot while sanding, grinding, milling, etc., had REALLY rusted up nicely. I poured that rust-laden water into the vinegar mix, just for good measure. (Maybe pineapple juice is the magic ingredient?) Good luck! -- paulallen, tucson az

[Paddlefoot]

Maybe water is the secret?  Just hadn't seen it mentioned before.

[A.Merrill]

    Caliber45, Thanks for the reply. It maybe the rust is the key,it has already started breaking down the metal, sounds good anyway     AL

[Rolf]

I used degreased steel wool , no rust  + 7% regular vinegar , on these pistols.  Trial and error showed that 3 months brewing  at 24 degrees celsius was adequate. Longer brewing times (up to 18 months) made no difference. First coat allways turned the wood blue/grey. Further appilcations, once daily, changed the color to dark brown. Diluting the stain, 1part stain to 3 parts vingar and let it stand for a week gave reddish tones. I'll try making a batch aqua fortis this summer to compare the color with the vinegaroon.

Best regards

Rolf

[Paddlefoot]

Rolf, Thanks for your input on this. It follows what John Cholin said way back when. It appears to me that just being rusty is not enough to guarantee the color you want. Lots of us have used rusty steel wool and had poor results(but maybe just because we didn't apply enough coats?). So far I am most impressed with the cast iron finial which had no rust at all on it when I put it in the vinegar. If rust was the key that railroad spike should have been a winner as it was thick with it and the vinegar was obviously eating away at it as there is a good rusty sludge on the bottom of the jar and the half of the spike that is out of the vinegar has the rust saturated and standing up like rusty hair. The batch with the finial make a nice brown while the batch with the spike is still making the blue-black color. That was one coat of stain out of each jar so maybe the spike batch would turn out brown with more application.

[b bogart]

I got a kind of deep brown, no reds. Still got the batch I made, may try to dilute with fresh vinegar to see if I can get a reddish color some other time. My first from a blank so not what you all are used to!

[Paddlefoot]

Looks fine to me. Acer seems to get that reddish brown better than most of us with his stain.

[Steve Bookout]

Hei Rolf!  Beautiful brace of pistols!  MVH, Bookie

[Long John]

"My vinegar stain also turns maple gray."

Is that before or after you applied a finish?

Usually when I am staining a stock the color is a brownish gray with stain only but the orange a tones emerge when finishis applied.  Both of these rifles looked brownish gray befoe finish was applied.





If you are gettting a "muddy" color you are proable not decanting off the clear liquid for your stain.  You should use only clear liquid for the stain.  It also helps to dewisker the wood before staining although both of the above pictured rifles were dewiskered with stain.

When you go to Dixon's you will find that the overwhelming majority of the old original rifles have a colre more akin to what Rolf achieved than the bright reds that some people aim for.   By the way, Rolf, those are two REALLY FINE looking pistols.  Those really red original Lehigh rifles were probably stained with a red dye. 

All of the acid/iron stains produce a mixture of ferrous, ferric and ferrosoferric oxides.  These oxides are black, reddish orange and brownish black respectively.  The exact shade you get depends upon the mixture of those oxides.  There are a lot of variables like the naturally occurring slats in the wood, the salts in your water, etc.

Best Regards,

JMC

[Paddlefoot]

John, do I remember correctly that this color you have on these two pieces is from adding vinegar to the iron rich solution and testing until you have something close to what you want colorwise?

[Long John]

Paddle,

The top rifle was stained with straight decanted (clear liquid) stain.  I made my stain by putting a couple of feet of old rusty barbed wire into a 2 quart pottery crock and pouring in about a quart or so of cider vinegar and leaving it be.  I have been using the same crock of stain for 15 or so years.  There is a mass of brown looking, muddy $#@* in the bottom of the crock.  I don't worry about that too much.  When it is time to stain a new rifle I stir it all up along with enough fresh cider vinegar to refill the crock.  Once it has settled I decant off some freshened stain and apply.  I just add vineger to make-up for any that evaporates away over the years.  The top Buck's County squirrel rifle was stained just that way.

For the second rifle, "Journey", I varied the method slightly.  I was wanting to get a oranger color than my test scraps indicated so I took freshened stain and mixed an equal volume of cider vinegar to that, thinking that I might nudge the stain a little more to the red end of the color range.  I am not sure that accomplished anything.

You can't judge anything on the basis of the color you get with just stain.  The color is the sum of the color contributions from the wood, the stain and the finish.  Each contributes to the over all color.  Just like if you are mixing paints, if you mix red and green you will get brown.  If you want to get an idea of what the stain will look like you really have to apply some type of oil to the stained wood.  Commercal linseed oil will do.  Also keep in mind that the reason the contrast of the curl is enhanced is because more stain soaks into the end-grain wood than flat grain wood of the curl.  That means that you have to burnish the stained wood before you apply finish to rub the surface stain off the flat-grained wood.  That gives you contrast.  I use a piece of hemp rope as a burnishing brush.  I took a piece of hemp rope and cut it into lengths about 4 inches long.  I then laid them together like cordwood and wrapped them real tight about the middle with some twine.  The result is a hemp-bristle brush that burnishes maple very nicely and will de-fuz your carving  - even incised cuts.

Best Regards,

JMC

[Paddlefoot]

Thanks John. I sure like those Bucks County guns. I had to save photos of them for my motivational files.  Over the last couple of years I have messed with this stuff a bit but never got to a point where I was ready to put it on a stock. I put small amounts of iron in the vinegar and diluted the fully iron saturated vinegar/iron and tried every combo I could think of to get it to do something other than blue-black but I never burnished it or put a finish on it (on test pieces). I still wish I understood why the oldest batch took so long to start giving a med brown color when the newest batch with the ornamental iron finial only took 3 weeks or so. Have you ever had any reaction from the brass parts using this stain? What about that addition of water to the vinegar? Wouldn't that just lower the acidity?

[kernalvax]

instead of decanting off the top of the settled liquid, could you run it through some extra fine filter paper to remove the particulate? or would that remove the agent that makes the color change?


-Tim

[Long John]

Tim,

The REASON the acid/iron stains provide such a depth and vibrance of color is that they are a solution - meaning that individual molecules of iron acetate or iron nitrate flow into the wood and later turn to iron oxide molecules.  A filter only blocks the large particles and lets the finer particles flow through.  The finest filter you can find will still be letting particles through that are close to 1,000,000 times larger than the individual molecules.  This is why commercial pigment stains don't achieve the same depth of color that the real acid/iron stains do.

If you want the best results decant off clear solution.  If you rely on a filter your results might look dull and muddy.

Best Regards,

JMC