Finish for a rustic dining table--African Mahogany (Sipo)?

[Danny Thompson]

Need your advice.

The project is a rustic dining table made from 12/4 x 9" x 72" beams. Breadboard ends, through-mortises, and loose-wedge construction. The wood is African Mahogany (Sipo) that has a straight ribbon grain (i.e., very distinct reversing grain). I would like to end up with an aged dark brown look (as opposed to red) with some of the grain's shimmer preserved (for warmth).

After buying one of Jeff Jewitt's books and reading a bunch or articles, I tried a half-dozen tests. The results have been okay, but not great.

What I have tried:

Schedule 1: Danish oil, medium brown oil stain, coffee-colored gel stain, wipe-on poly. This produced a good color, but looked almost painted--almost too fine.
Schedule 2: Dark brown dye, medium brown gel stain, wipe-on poly. The dye was not absorbed into the ribbons evenly, some some of them were nearly black, which resulted in a splotchy look.
Schedules 3 & 4: General Finishes Java gel stain/General Finishes Medium Brown gel stain on the bare wood. Great dark color, but completely obscured the grain--no warmth whatsoever. (I should say, if you ever want to achieve a flat dark finish, this gel stain, left on for 5-10 minutes before wiping would be an excellent choice.).

Do you have any suggestions?

[mike holden]

I have taken several of Jeff Jewitt's classes, and one of his recomendations for mahogany was "six coats of waterlox, the original". Try it on a sample board, I found that after a few coats the color suddenly darkened; but the first few were like water.
Mike

[Steve Schoene]

Try making your first dye coat yellow. It will look horrible. Then apply a shellac wash coat of about 1 lb. cut (this varies the effect and you may fine a lighter or heavier cut works better.) Still will look really bad. Then apply a second coat of dye, in the darker brown mahogany that you are looking for. (I know--dye for bare wood, but in this case the shellac has only partially sealed the wood and will to a degree preserve some yellow high lights in the more dense parts that were more completely sealed by the shellac.) The porous parts will take the dye more. This may look a bit boldly figured, but if you then lightly seal with shellac, and apply a brown pigment only wiping stain, or a gel stain, the unevenness will be reduced, but the shimmer should remain. Make sure that the test board is large enough to really see the effect on the figure and shimmer.

[Prashun Patel]

I did a console table in African Mahogany and I dyed it with medium brown and then washed it with BLO before topcoating.

If yr doing a dining table, you might consider filling the grain else you'll get a fairly dimply top.

[Danny Thompson]

Thanks for the advice, guys. I'll see what I can do with it.