Finishing Children's Toys - Colorfast Solutions Needed

[Martin Hutton]

I've made a few wooden toys for my son out of cherry and finished with Tried & True Original Finish (polymerized linseed oil & beeswax) which has worked well.

However, I've been exploring getting into using colors: either Arti Toymaker's Dye or Liquid Watercolor. Now, I've seen a lot of U.S. companies will either seal these colors using a shellac or lacquer so there is no bleed. Lacquer doesn't seem to be used on toys for <3yr toys that may be teethed.

The catch is that I want to leave a rough wood surface or somewhat tacky surface on some toys so that they stack easily (blocks, shapes, etc.) into towers. I've been sanding these toys to 80 grit and after I raise the grain, they grip nicely. Shellac/lacquer will leave them too smooth and I need more friction. I've seen European companies do this by using colored carnauba wax but haven't seen any comparable products in the U.S. (Grimms uses BIOFA Color Wax 20871; they don't have distributors in the US). They are quite colorfast contrary to everything I've heard about waxes:

https://www.biofa-fr.com/shops/419/6...t-free-colored
https://www.biofa-de.com/files/3471/...telfrei-en.pdf

I was thinking I could mix up Arti Toymaker Dye in water, paint it on, let it dry, and then try to either apply a homemade mixture of Carnauba wax or a commercial product over top (or would mixing the color with the wax be better?). I've seen a number of clear paste waxes use Carnauba as a main ingredient and thought I could try those first: Johnson's paste wax or The Real Milk Paint clear carnauba wax paste. Their short tutorial sounds like it could work: https://www.realmilkpaint.com/help/t...colored-waxes/. Could get expensive fast buying a lot of their clear wax and milk paint color pigment.

Does anyone have experience with coloring toys but leaving rough wood grain? As long as you don't buff the carnauba to a semi-gloss, it should retain a nice matte finish?

Just painting them is a last resort as I wanted to leave some wood grain showing through, but if acrylic or milk paint can be diluted enough and leave a rough surface, that could work also.

[Martin Hutton]

To follow up on this, BIOFA doesn't seem to have distributors in the U.S. (although they offered to ship from Europe with import taxes, customs, etc.). I found Osmo has a similar product, "wood wax intensive colors" with online distributors in the U.S: Osmo 3104 (red), 3105 (yellow), 3125 (blue), 3131 (green) with white (3186) and black (3169) to tint/shade.

They went on easily, have great coverage, and after 24-hours were colorfast to saliva and water. I mixed in-between colors fine (orange, green), but the red/blue mix didn't seem to make a violet (which can be a problem for some mix of pigments: they turn brown/gray instead since the red may have some yellow in it).