Best Finish to Accent Quarter Sawn White Oak?

[alex grams]

I am working on a project with QSWO, and wondering some of the better methods to highlight the fleck pattern of the wood. All of the framing is QSWO, with figured/crotch oak panels and an oak burl top.

Thanks in advance.

[Scott Holmes]

Dye; color of course is a personal choice.

[Jack Clark]

Take a look at these. I'll be testing several later this week.

www.homesteadfinishingproducts.com/pdf/mission_oak_rev6-2010.pdf

[Steve Costa]

Jack,

Thanks for the reference. I have a QSWO project in mind just need the $$$ to buy the wood!!!

Steve

[alex grams]

yeah, i found that pdf from Jewitt. I started making up samples last night to test with.

[Jack Clark]

yeah, i found that pdf from Jewitt. I started making up samples last night to test with.

Well after we each mess around with this a little, I guess we'll just have to compare notes... :)

[alex grams]

I will be happy to post some pictures later of how it turns out. I am working on a desk for my father and he wants a darker look to the project. The desk is framed in QSWO with figured oak panels, oak crotch doors and a burl oak top. Will be interesting to see how the finish turns out on the other types of wood.

[Jack Clark]

I will try to do the same. That is, post photos of my tests.

If you go to the Lumberjocks website and type mission finish into their search function, you'll get all sorts of interesting ideas.

[Ben Martin]

Do you guys have any pictures that you can post? I am working on my finish test pieces for my mission pieces right now, I would really like to nail it down since I will be doing the whole basement in the same finish...

[Scott Velie]

I have had success fuming with ammonia. I really like the color it gives. It is not the easiest way to do it but is historically correct. It does require some precautions and I had a time finding the 25% ammonia solution. It is not your grocery store ammonia. I now have plenty of it. ( I had to buy 4 gallons). Anybody need some?
See
http://www.codesmiths.com/shed/workshop/techniques/oakfuming/

[Steve Schoene]

Remember that the purpose of fuming the oak was to DOWNPLAY the flake figure of QSWO. Dye will similarly give a low contrast between the flake and the rest of the wood unless you sand the surface. But if the purpose is just to highlight the flake and make it stand out more, use a pigment only stain which will color the more porous parts, and the pores, and leave the more dense flake figure much lighter.

Of course this isn't an authentic Arts & Crafts look but that wasn't mentioned by the original poster.

[Jack Clark]

Remember that the purpose of fuming the oak was to DOWNPLAY the flake figure of QSWO. Dye will similarly give a low contrast between the flake and the rest of the wood unless you sand the surface. But if the purpose is just to highlight the flake and make it stand out more, use a pigment only stain which will color the more porous parts, and the pores, and leave the more dense flake figure much lighter.

Steve, that's pretty much what I have found during my testing. Won't be trying fuming because I want the flakes and rays to pop (plus I don't have the room for a tent and I'm accident prone). Now it's down to finding just the right combination of stain, dye and shellac–of course, not necessarily in that order.

[Jack Clark]

But if the purpose is just to highlight the flake and make it stand out more, use a pigment only stain which will color the more porous parts, and the pores, and leave the more dense flake figure much lighter.

Steve,

Do you have any favorite pigment stains to achieve this effect?

[Prashun Patel]

I just re-read an old WOOD article where they describe a technique that many use to pop figure on curly maple. The samples in the article looked great.

The flecks are denser and won't absorb dye or stain as well as the surrounding wood. So, you use a dilute dye mixture on the entire piece, and then sand it back. The flecks will be lighter after the sanding; the surrounding areas will retain the color.

You can then color the wood with more dye (the contrast will remain).

Once the coloring is completed, you seal it with shellac, and top coat it.

[Jack Clark]

Ah, very good. Thank you Prashun. I will try that.

What issue of Wood magazine? Was the dye dissolved in water or alcohol? (Probably doesn't matter that much.)

[Prashun Patel]

I think they rec'd water for ease of control. Since yr gonna sand back, grain raising is a non-issue anyway. I'll see if I can scan it for you tonite. I forget the issue but I'll find it.

[alex grams]

I started last night with about a dozen sample plates of QSWO veneer, started a few with the Jewitt mission style schedule, then tried some other stains on other pieces that i will post up when I get them finished. Still a week away from really having anything to show, but I will post them when I have them done.

[Jack Clark]

I started last night with about a dozen sample plates of QSWO veneer,

Alex, I'm curious about the thickness of your veneer. Is it the paper thin stuff that you get when you buy it from a veneer supply house, or did you resaw it yourself (i.e., a little thicker)?

[Kent A Bathurst]

.......with the Jewitt mission style schedule....

The part about Jeff's technique that I like is getting a dark background color via stain into the pores [the stain he recommended, and that I used, is no longer available - I still have a couple unopened cans - am sure the revised material works just fine as well]. The notes above about dye, flecks, light sanding are all on target. This is all exactly what I have done with some repro pieces out of very, very nice bookmatched qswo from Talarico. Came out wonderful, all credit to Jeff - I simply did as instructed.

[alex grams]

The veneer I have is the standard 1/42nd. I do have some pieces I resawed myself that are thicker. The veneer seems to be a little more open in the pores than the actual wood, but other than that, I can't tell much of a difference.

Here are some in-progress pictures. I am still up-in-the-air on the gel stain over the transtint/sealer. I seem to have mixed results. Some of them give a strong clear aged finish, while other pieces really seem to muddle the wood grain and just make the coloring and grain look very homogeneous.

Most all of these are a combination of the following:

First Coat:
-Transtint - Dark Mission
-Various Oil Based Stains (sticking with darker stains)
-Gel Stain (General Finish - American Walnut)
-BLO - As a base reference of oak with just an oil, I did two smaller pieces with BLO and seal-a-cell)

Second Coat:
-General Finish Seal-A-Cell (most pieces are split 50/50 with this, you can easily tell the difference on them, with the sharper, more vivid halves being the sides which were applied with Seal-A-Cell, and the duller halves being untreated
-2# Garnet Shellac (rubbed on). This was done on the top right piece in the first attachment (mg 122).

Second/Third Coat
Gel Stain over the General Finish Seal-A-Cell
This is the longer piece with 4 shaded sections and a line splitting it longitudinally. The longitudinal line splits the piece with half applied with seal-a-cell over an oil stain first coat, and the other half having no seal-a-cell. Then piece is split with the top half one color of stain and the bottom another, and then the two ends having a gel stain as a 2nd/3rd coat.

Hard to explain, but they are all labeled on their backsides. I am putting on General Finish Arm-R-Seal on some pieces now and Waterlox on others. I can look at the pieces when I get home to answer specifically which pieces have which finish.

Also, the third picture is of the curly oak veneer I used for the panels on the desk, just to see how they respond. They take the stains a little darker than the QSWO veneers do. Please note that the first and third pictures have the camera flash on while the second is no-flash. The flash of course accents the grain chatoyance, so the true appearance of the wood and its grain is in between the flash and non-flash images.

[Kyle Kaldor]

Alex, those are some interesting samples. I'm curious as to what you used on the bottom left sample in the first picture?

[alex grams]

Kyle,
That would be transtint: dark mission, general finish seal-a-cell then gel stain antique walnut (general finish).

That picture makes the dark a little darker and the light a little lighter of the two halves.

I took some more pictures in natural sunlight to give some a better full spectrum coloring of the piece. Though we all know that pictures capturing finish work about as well as Ray Charles trying to paint the Mona Lisa.

This has the cards flipped with the descriptions on the back. The cards are flipped top/bottom, so when you see a card back in one picture, comparing it to its front you have to inverse the description on the back to know what it describes on the front.