Staining Black Walnut

[Aaron Cain]

Hey guys,

This may seem like a stupid question but does anyone have any experience color matching the light colored outer wood of a Black Walnut tree with the much darker heart wood. After milling up the tree I have a few pieces of the tree that are 50% white and 50% dark. Do saw off the white and discard or can I match it using a particular stain or dye? Do I only stain the white section or both halves?

Thanks Guys
Aaron

[Jim Becker]

The challenge is that the darker heart wood will get lighter over time. If you truly want "matched" walnut, you'll want to buy kiln dried and steamed walnut which already has the sap darkened by the steam, etc. If you want/need to dye the sap in existing stock, then you'll want to consider staying a little lighter than the heart and carefully work in the dye with a small brush. I suggest you use water soluble dye so you can easily even things out before it "dries".

[Steve Schoene]

Yes, you can buy steamed walnut and that's mostly what you'll find. But if you have a chance to buy walnut that has not been steamed and only kiln dried enough to kill bugs, you will have a different wood, with purples, both milk chocolate, and dark chocolate, along with a bit of orange. It's a much more complex wood than steamed walnut. It's true that the colors will shift toward the brown over time, but much of the complexity is maintained.

Best solution for the sap wood is to either incorporate it into the design or leave it to the scrap pile.

You can dye the sap wood to match, but it's really hard to get the color to match for very long. The heartwood both lightens and turns more yellow or orange in sunlight, while the sapwood just lays there. You can start with dye, such as a a very light concentration of orange, just to pull the color together for both heartwood and sapwood. Then work the darker colors over the sapwood brushing in the same sort of color streaks, if there are any that you see in the heartwood. Then seal with a coat of shellac. (About 2 lb. cut works fine.) Then apply a thin pigmented wiping stain with a medium dark colored pigment. The pigment further unifies the coloration, and tends to slow color change a bit as well. Top coats of a somewhat darker shade work well--dark shellac, or a relatively dark varnish such as Behlen Rockhard, or Waterlox, Original/Sealer work well. If you want to use a waterborne top coat make sure it has a bit of amber dye, such as TransTint added.

But if you have the nearly air dried walnut, you can just apply shellac as a top coat with no stain or dye. Oiling with BLO before the shellac is optional--some people think it darkens the walnut too much.

[Aaron Cain]

You guys are a great help

Thanks again

Aaron