I’m redoing some trim in a room that’s paneled with old heart pine that has naturally darkened over the years, and I need to stain the new stuff to match the old stuff. The old wood is somewhere between the color of ipe and mahogany, more or less.
I’m not a finish guy, but I have seen heart pine stained to look something like black walnut… so I know it can be done.
I just don’t quite know how to do it. Any advice is welcome
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Replies
I'd start with a shellac sealer, either amber or clear , and begin building layers. Start with a darker background glaze and work up lighter, maybe with shellac 'tween coats.
I use waterbased base concentrates that are compatible with just about everything, so I can mix w/ alchol, water or glycol. The shellac is a barrier between the resins and subsequent coats.
If ya mess up, a rag with denatured alc. will get ya back to square one.
Thanks but, sad to say, I want an easier way out if I can get it. The finish problem is more trivial than exacting, and I only need to get close. I’m making trim to tie together the 3 sides of a vaulted ceiling in a small bathroom, and all it needs to do is to not stand out like a sore thumb.
As I take it, the gist of your reply is that heart pine is effectively impervious to stains and you need to do surface treatments.
I have some samples that I'm going to sand with 100 and 80 grit and do different times to wipeoff with a Red Mahogany stain (225) from Minwax
Edited 6/27/2009 9:08 pm ET by Huplescat
TransTint dye in shellac. You can do coats every hour, and build to the color you want.And yes, heart pine is fairly impervious to stain.
Huplescat,Pine will blotch if you don't use a sealer first. Sealcote works great and is quick and easy. You can mix the different Minwax stains together until you get the right color. Mahogany and Cherry would be my guess.KK
I've not had Heart Pine blotch anything like White pine, it's dense and resinous. The hardened resin repels stain more than anything. Or worse , gets soft when the stain solvent hits it, and sometimes stays tacky for a long while.
The shellac will meld with the resin ( amber basically) and thats a good thing. Makes the next layer adhere better and color transparency is enhanced by the suspension in the shellac, instead of being absorbed into uneven pores like white pine has. The late wood in H.P. is so dense, it won't take any stain at all,it must be glazed to alter the hue.
Playing with a lathe today (G)
That may work ok, but the min wax may soften the resin to ill effect. Better to seal and stain over that. Alot depends on the slice of the wood and the age.
You can get shellac in darker colors than the normal amber (orange). I would try button-lac or garnet shellac. Then you wouldn't have to do so much with dyes. Dyes, rather than stains, may also penetrate the pine, but if it is resinous like people say, maybe even dye won't penetrate. There are alcohol based dyes that you could probably mix right in the shellac too, but as I said, shellac itself comes in colors ranging from clear (blonde) to dark brown (seedlac). Such can be found in Rocklers.
Another vote for TransTint dyes. They can be mixed with water or alcohol and can be added as a toner to finishes (e.g. shellac). One bonus of this approach is that the character of the wood still comes through. Can be brushed or sprayed. I've dyed some maple, notorious for splotching, with no problems. Just opened the spray gun wide open and just fogged the dye on. You can finish with just about anything; I like to put a coat of shellac over the dye before finish coating.