Jim C Martin
05-23-2015, 10:09 PM
Hello All:
I was recently reading up on ammonia fuming because I was having trouble getting much color in some white oak. I came across this article (http://goarticles.com/article/The-Ammonia-Fuming-Process-for-White-Oak/1655685/) explaining that if you couldn't get enough color from ammonia fuming, you could treat the work piece with tannic acid or pyrogallic acid. So I bought some of each and it helped with the oak I was fuming. On a whim I decided to try it on maple. Not much happened with tannic acid but the pyrogallic acid made a huge difference. See the pics. First pic is the treated dry wood along side the board it came from. In the second pic, I wiped on some mineral spirits to simulate how it might look with a finish.
My procedure was pretty simple. I just put the scrap of maple in a shallow container of pyrogallic acid for a few minutes (just enough to get one face wet). Then I let it sit for a few minutes and then wiped directly on some 10% ammonia from Ace. The color change was very rapid. I decided to set it in a shallow container of ammonia for a while but the color didn't get much darker. Opens up a lot of possibilities.
Fun with chemistry!
Cheers,
Jim
Edit: Dang, I can't edit the title to correct my typo.
314118314119
I was recently reading up on ammonia fuming because I was having trouble getting much color in some white oak. I came across this article (http://goarticles.com/article/The-Ammonia-Fuming-Process-for-White-Oak/1655685/) explaining that if you couldn't get enough color from ammonia fuming, you could treat the work piece with tannic acid or pyrogallic acid. So I bought some of each and it helped with the oak I was fuming. On a whim I decided to try it on maple. Not much happened with tannic acid but the pyrogallic acid made a huge difference. See the pics. First pic is the treated dry wood along side the board it came from. In the second pic, I wiped on some mineral spirits to simulate how it might look with a finish.
My procedure was pretty simple. I just put the scrap of maple in a shallow container of pyrogallic acid for a few minutes (just enough to get one face wet). Then I let it sit for a few minutes and then wiped directly on some 10% ammonia from Ace. The color change was very rapid. I decided to set it in a shallow container of ammonia for a while but the color didn't get much darker. Opens up a lot of possibilities.
Fun with chemistry!
Cheers,
Jim
Edit: Dang, I can't edit the title to correct my typo.
314118314119