Looking for Aqua Fortis recipe

[Norskie]

Does anyone have a formula for aqua fortis? I have a memory of Herschel House's video, but druther work from a recipe than blow nitric all over my shop.

 

[Swampman]

Disolve steel wool in strong nitric acid until it will take no more. Me very careful wile doing this. It gets hot and gives off some really nasty orange smoke.

 

[Bountyhunter]

There are several recipes in Foxfire 5 in the rifle making section. Hershel Houses old recipes as well as some others.

 

[jdhiii]

Mixing iron with nitric acid produces ferric nitrate. If you don't want to mess with a strong acid and toxic fumes, consider buying ferric nitrate crystals and dissolve them in distilled water. You get basically the same stain, but less hazardous in the making (or less adventurous depending on your point of view). Many old posts on this subject with good info --- check 'em out.

 

[rabbit03]

Foxfire recepie that I have used forever.

Water, NItric and steel wool.
[url] http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b206/rabbit03/first1007.jpg[/url]

rabbit03

 

[crgabel]

here's mine.
68% nitric acid, mixed into well or distilled water at a ratio of 4 parts water to 1 part nitric acid. Place 5 pcs of old barbed wire fence 5 " long into solution.(all mixed inside a 1 qt masons jar) Allow to sit and boil ( which will start after about 20 mins or so) allow it to cook for a min of 3 hours. Then strain thru an old sock, allow to sit for 1 month to settle and your ready to go. REMEMBER ACID INTO WATER NOT WATER INOT ACID. :winking:
Craig

 

[longshot47]

Rabbit-
That stock is impeccable!
I found myself reaching out to touch it thru the monitor screen. How did you achieve the lustre finish??
~Longshot

 

[rabbit03]

Hi guy,

the lusture finish is somewhat decieving because I had just finished oiling it before the photo. I wanted the true color to be able to come out for the photo. The recepie mentioned above sounds like it is pretty close and the photo of my Vincent Rifle here is the result. Just remember always make and use the nitric stain outside or in a well ventilated area because breathing the fumes can sear your lungs and cause permantent damage if inhaled. OH yeah protective gloves might be used also or your hands will be yellow for a few days! Good luck

rabbit03

 

[rabbit03]

Here are a couple more to give you an idea of how well the stain works on Sugar Maple.

rabbit03

[url] http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b206/rabbit03/first1004.jpg[/url]

[url] http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b206/rabbit03/first1006.jpg[/url]

 

[crgabel]

Nice job Rabbit!

 

[CrackStock]

Rabbit,

Did you degrease the steel wool or just toss it in as receiving in the plastic wrapper? I understood that soaking in Dawn and drying thoroughly was an important part of prepping the steel wool. Not so?

CS

 

[Norskie]

Thanks to everybody for the info. I ain't real good at tracking down the old posts, yet. I did spend 15 years working with strong acids and alkalis when I was building Cray supercomputers. I still have all my gear somewhere; faceshield, rubber apron, gloves, boots, and most important, brains, I hope!

 

[bioprof]

Here's a stock that I am just finishing that was treated with aqua fortis. Thought I had really screwed up because I didn't dilute the aqua fortis, but it's not looking too bad. I like the warm color. It definitely has a lot of contrast. I dissolved pure iron filings in a 50:50 mixture of concentrated nitric acid under a fume hood. It scared the living daylights out of a coworker that was stirring it when it all of a sudden started boiling and gave off orange fumes. :haha:

 

[rabbit03]

NO. I just threw the steel wool in the nitric and water mix as it came from the package. don't worry the oil in the wool will be eaten ALIVE by the acid! The reason to mix water with the acid is that water provides the oxygen (nitric lacks oxygen) which makes the nitric more powerfull. I would say about 1/4 nitric to 3/4 water like the above recepie and then just put in probably one or two pads of wool. The idea is to give the acid (that you have mixed up) enough wool or steel that it expends all of its energy trying to eat up the steel. What is left is as you have seen here, a great looking stain that has been used for almost as long as there have been blackpowder rifles. If you have a little bit of wool that is left and did not get eaten up, no big deal just remove it and use what is left. Just be carefull to do all of this in the open preferably. And to set the stain it is a good idea to heat up the stock after applying the stain to the wood. You can put it in the oven, warm it over a forge, use a hand held torch (just be carefull not to burn the wood though) or anything you can think of really that will cause the stain to set into the wood. Once you have it all dried (set) then just card it off lightly with fine steel wool that is soaked in some kind of oil. I generally use boiled lindseed oil.

Good luck and put up some photos when done.

rabbit03

 

[CrackStock]

Actually I have done a couple of them with AquaFortis in the past, but it was readily available as a finished product back then and I just bought it from TotW.

The rifle that I am doing currently is quite plain and in need of a simpler stain.

On the other hand, I do have two half stocks laying around here to work on later...

CS