Dying and toning black walnut

[David Utterback]

Have a small set of bookshelves assembled and need help matching colors of walnut. Different pieces have colors that range from purplish grey to medium brown to deep purple brown. My guess is that different colorants are needed to make all pieces at least coordinate or, ideally, match. Most is rift sawn materials.

The dark walnut water-based stain is way too black. I am willing start using dyes and I have spray equipment to apply if needed. Will finish with sprayed Target 8000 series.

Thanks!

[John TenEyck]

Take some scrap of the various pieces and make some test specimens with the dye. Adjust the dye concentration as needed until you get the right average hue. That's another way of saying I really doubt it's too dark; at low concentration it will have almost no affect. See how the specimens look at that concentration. They might be more uniform than you now think. If not, you can adjust the hue by spraying multiple coats on the lighter pieces, or even feathering in on lighter areas on a piece. If none of that meets your satisfaction, then it's probably time to consider adding stain and/or glaze to the dye. Jeff Jewitt has a really good article on finishing walnut covering what I talked about above; take a look at his website at Homestead Finishing, it might be in one of the articles. If not, it's definitely in his finishing book.

John

[Lee Schierer]

I would leave it alone. Those purple tones will disappear quickly due to light exposure.

just my 2 cents worth.

[Gordon Stump]

I use the various shades of Watco Danish Oil to even out the variations. Black Walnut, Dark Walnut, Medium Walnut and Light Walnut.

[Tom Bender]

Walnut tends to fade quite a lot even without sunlight, and it starts out kinda light anyway. I use Minwax Special Walnut stain on the raw wood. Wipe on, wipe off. Second coat just to catch any light spots.

However, if you have included some sapwood it may require something more. Stain then seal that with blond shellac then paint the light spots with something else, maybe dye in varnish.

[Robert Engel]

I’ve used GF medium brown dye diluted to tone don the darkness.

[David Utterback]

Both the GF and the Minwax water based walnut stains were too dark with dominant blackish tones. Transfast dye was easy to use and to control for color density. However, some of the lighter brown pieces that are slats for the mission style sides of the bookcase were still noticeably lighter and reddish. After a light spray shellac coat and sanding on all pieces, I used the GF finish to tone the slats with rubbed light coats and all parts are ready for the topcoats prior to assembly.

Rounding third and heading for home. Thanks for all the input!