Cast iron and vinegar?

[Hungry Horse]

 I was wondering if  rusty cast iron works well for making vinegaroon? The last time I tried it, the solution turned the maple rather gray, with darker gray stripes. It just seemed like a win, win, if I could clean up some antique cookware, and make stock stain at the same time.
 I may have not let the solution work long enough. If I can find my test piece, I may give it a hydrogen peroxide wash, just to see if it changes things.

  Hungry Horse

[somehippy]

I used rusty barbed wire for mine, took a couple years but its pretty well dissolved now.  For some reason adding a little water to the vinegar helped. The stain gets better as it ages it seems, when i put it on my smoothbore stock yesterday the stain was quite reddish, certainly not grey from the rust.  When i first put the concoction together it gave a grey appearance for a few weeks.

[Pennsylvania Dutchman]

I saved a coffee can full of cast iron cuttings from my band saw that I was going to use for vinegaroon. But, I was concerned that the carbon in the cast iron would turn everything dark grey or black, so I used some mild steel cuttings instead. I don't know if it would have caused a problem or not, I just decided not to take a chance.
Mark Poley

[Long John]

Hungry,

If you had tossed some stock finish on that gray striped stock the gray would have turned a dark reddish brown.  Its all optics but I don't want to bore you all with all the physics.  Suffice to say, the color you see is NOT just the color of the pigments in the wood but the sum of the light reflected by the wood surface and the light reflected from the wood and the pigments (stain) in the wood.  Surface reflections tend to make the stain look more black and blue UNTIL you knock those reflections down with the oil/resins/varnish of the stock finish.

Best regards,

JMC
John Cholin

[longcruise]

I used the chips or shavings or whatever they're called from the lathe that the auto parts stores turn drums and rotors on.  It turned maple grey and veg tan leather black.