Vinegar Stain?

[mule ear]

Well now, we seem to have entered a different arena. I suppose the most obvious observation is that it might make a difference if the oil was boiled or not. The vinegar could obviously be a thinner, but the acid would attack the "vegetable" (as opposed to petrolium) oils. The attack may accelerate drying or harden the dried oils. The above is just wild speculation; I've never heard of adding vinegar to linseed oil. I'll do some lookin' in my books. Thanks for the inquiry.

 

OK, we must get something straight. This stain will not work if you go into deep chemical analysis and hitech processes including PH balance and consistancy testing.

It is rusty nails and vinegar, aged in the dark for several weeks.

Wipe it on and let it turn black.

steel wool the whiskers off.

do this until you are sure you have ruined the stock because it is black and grungy beyond hope.

Now wipe it down with linseed oil, not g-9, not linspeed, not true oil, not WD40 or 10W40.

The reason this stuff works for so few people is that no one can follow the simple process involved!

It does not have to be improved, changed, modified or added too.

The stock does not have to go through a chemical prep of any kind.

You do not have to blush it or scorch the stock with a torch.

If you do not like the color you obtain then you can use the food coloring, iceing, candy flowers and polyurithene, put it into the oven and bake it at 350 for an hour and serve it in small slices!

The color is different on every piece of wood ranging from rich blonde to deep brown and walnut tones. It is impossible to predetirmine the color you will get. This is part of the suprise element!

IF YOU HAVE YOUR HART SET ON A SPECIFIC COLOR THIS IS NOT THE PROCESS FOR YOU.

Use spray paint or bottled dye instead! (actually I have nothing against spray paint and bottled dyes. I have used them along with milk paint and water based arcrellics when necessary. It's hard to get the proper hex signs painted inside the patchbox without good milk paint!)

:results:

 

[Plumb Center]

Reading this all with great interest. Rifle is on order from TOW. If you want stronger vinegar, get some bakers vinegar, it is 20%+. I use it for weed control in the vineyard. We delute 50% with water and it is still strong.

 

[broken arrow]

OK... after 14 days I have a concoction that is blacker than strong black coffee, has evaporated little if any, and has very small pieces of the rebar left.

It'll have a chance to "stew" for a while till I'm ready to use it. I'll let you know what happens then.

 

[Riley/MN]

Hey SJ,

I have a friend who used to market a product that has about the same recipe. Could maybe be exactly the same, as I'm not at home right now to check. Could even be the article was written by that very friend, as he does write for ML. Anyway, I asked about the vinegar, too. He said the acid in it helped the oil penetrate. The stuff worked really good on another friend's stripped T/C Hawken stock.

 

[broken arrow]

Update...
After 22 days it still has a frothy head every morning and it has now changed to a thick chocolate milk look.
So yesterday I tried it on a couple of wood scraps. A piece of cherry turned black and a piece of oak turned chocolate brown. I'll coat them with some tung oil and see what I get next.

 

[bob1961]

what bout copper in the vinager instead of iron....what kind of color can one expect from that or has it not been tried...................bob

 

what bout copper in the vinager instead of iron....what kind of color can one expect from that or has it not been tried...................bob

I see Bob is still loking for the RED hue in a stain.
Bob usually the color of copper in a corrosive stage is Green. Not sure what color it would result in this process. :results:

Woody

 

[mule ear]

Hey Ghost! Many thanks for your comments! I was merely searching for a plausable explanation of a "factoid" I was aware of - using urine for a stain. (ARGH!!!) Another post had previously delved into the chemistry of iron in an acid solution. I have been concerned about incomplete neutralizing of nitric acid stains and have been searching for a suitable PC alternative. I appreciate your tips on using, too; they are very helpful. I do not have a specific color in mind - I just want a nice result for my efforts without any glitches or excessive experimentation. (Like every one else!) I have a "brew" going now. After a month, the liquid is turning dark reddish, with a fair amount of sediment at the bottom. (Apparently, not as fast as other's brews.) When shaken, it does look like a bad cup of coffee (but I don't drink the stuff.) I expect it will be ready when I am ready for it. Is it OK to use the sediment, or should it be filtered out?

 

[bob1961]

ok so is there a time limit on how long this stain will keep if not used within a sertin time frame or will it keep for any kind of shelf life....as if i make it now and not be able to use it in say 6 months from now will it keep.........bob

 

[broken arrow]

Mule Ear,
I'm not sure how much sediment to leave so I'm going to test it 2 ways. One strained through some cheesecloth and one through a paint strainer. I'm sure that the sediment IS what we want, we just have to figure out how much of it is good.

Bob,
Someone (might have been on here) said that they have been using the same batch for 20 years. They just added more steel or more vinegar to change the color a bit.

 

[bioprof]

I want to start of batch of this stain, and have some steel wire that had plastic flags on the end to mark underground wires, gas lines, etc. Would this type of steel work? How do you know if it has the wrong metals like Mn?

 

[SilverBear]

I have made this with regular cheap old off the shelf vinegar and 000 steel wool that was shredded up pretty good. Let it set for 4 days and strained it off. Some folks will jar it, I just use a cut down plastic vinegar jug. If you do jar it, make sure you don't seal the lid tight, I know a fella that did that and the pressure built up and when he went to move it the jar decided to crack. He wasn't hurt (that is till his wife saw the 'ell of a mess in the basement stairwell where he had it sitting).

This works well for giving those new hawk handles that well carried look. I have also used it to dye jute cord for making tumplines.

Tony

 

[broken arrow]

Bioprof,
I think the easiest way to test the metal is to see if it rusts. If it rusts from laying out in the weather you "should" be ok. If it does not show any signs of rusting you can be sure it has alloys of some kind in it and it won't work for this mixture.
That is why you should be walking around old farmsteads looking for metal. That nice old rusted stuff.

 

[Hatcon]

Do you have a source for bakers vinegar?

 

[Kooner]

Have a pot of vinegar and nails brewing. Found some old twisted-iron lightning rod holders, cut them into pieces and threw them in the pot. At 2 weeks the brew looks like a big jug of Guinness Stout complete with brown foamy head. Rubbed some on a piece of white oak and it turned a nasty black in one coat. Is this normal? Do I need to dilute? I love the idea of using this vinegar stain technique on my GPR kit stock but quite frankly I'm scared. I need someone to comfort me and say it will be all right.

 

[TANSTAAFL]

Oak is loaded with tannin, so yes, it is normal.

There is nothing new about the vinegar/iron formula for wood stain, several wood working sites reference it. If in doubt, try a google for more info.

I was also skeptical of the vinegar/iron solution, I put several chunks of steel wool (well washed with detergent) with cider vinegar into a vented two liter bottle. Let it steep for a couple of months, tried it on scrap pieces of maple,(strained through a coffee filter) was very pleasantly surprised. Got a good brown with it straight and hit with heat gun after three applications had dried. Added a basic dash of rubbing alcohol and it produced a nice reddish tone.

 

[rich pierce]

Agree with most of the posts but I always avoid steel wool on a stock that will be stained with aquafortis or any acid-based stain until it is neutralized. Actually I do not use steel wool at all but if I did, I'd not use it till after the stock was neutralized. It can give a stock an odd speckly look because bits of steel wool are embedded in the wood though you cannot see them.
This is in Dixon's book, not my unique observation.
I advise testing each and every piece of maple with each and every prep of acid-based stain as they all react differently. You can get orange, red, honey, flat brown, dark brown, and tar-black depending on the wood and stain and number of applications. And with the same stain and 2 different pieces of wood, wildly different results on the same day. Just know what you're going to get before proceeding. Do it in the barrel channel if you bought a precarve or something and don't have any extra slabs of wood from the blank. heat it with a red-hot iron rod in the barrel channel, else if you heat externally you'll singe the top of the blank along the barrel channel.

 

There is no nitric acid in the vinegar stain.

It requires no neutralization.

It requires no heat for activation.

Its bueaty is in its simplicity.

No need to complicate it.

It seems that is difficult beyond the comprehension of most readers.

or is some level of complecation expected so we can feel perceuted in our endevors? (if it is easy its not worth the effort)

Is this an indication of the self abusive nature of the adult male? (this is way too easy, we must not be trying hard enough!)

or do we attempt to make any successes we have seem more complicated than necessary as an ego boost (it was so hard that you can't possibly do it)

Vinegar with rusty nails aged in the dark for 2 weeks and applied raw to the wood.

It's that simple.

 

[TANSTAAFL]

:m2c:: You are entitled to your dissertation. But, :results: OTOH, opinions are like a certain bodily orifice, we all have one.