How do I dye Cactus Juice brown (walnut)

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ctfolmar

ctfolmar

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Jul 29, 2013
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Location
San Antonio, Texas
I have some white wood I plan to stabilize with Cactus Juice. The wood is quite plain and monochrome. I think it would be decent if I was able to dye it brown to look like a naturally darker wood. I have some MinWax Medium Walnut stain that I really like, but from what I read, I'm guessing Cactus Juice and wood stain don't mix. I will not be turning it, so it needs the color throughout the blank. Cactus Juice does not offer a brown color that I can find. Anybody have any ideas on how to dye this white wood brown? Thanks for your input.
 
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My first thought is: buy some nice walnut burl and stabilize that. I wouldn't take the time or spend the money to stabilize anything that isn't top tier quality wood (aside from a piece of wood that has some sort of sentimental value). And I certainly wouldn't dye wood to make it look like wood I can buy.

That said, my thinking is that using wood stain is not the best idea. Wood stain has a lot of organic solvent that probably wont play nice with the CJ. And it will take a lot of stain to color the CJ (compared to a few drops of dye). Also, I believe that the particle size of the stain prevents it from penetrating very far. I would only use dyes specifically designed for wood stabilizing. You can try dunking a piece in stain without CJ and pull a vacuum on it and see how much penetration you get (though I doubt you will get very low on the vacuum because the stain will start to boil). If its good then dry it out and stabilize it.
 
You are probably right about just buying the wood. Sometimes I get so caught up in trying to figure out how to do something, it doesn't occur to me it would just be better and cheaper to go buy something.
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Alumilite dye will work - they have a brown:

Alumilite Dye - 1oz Brown

Use Alumilite’s Dyes to color your casting and stabilizing resins! The dye can be used in the clear resin to make a translucent colored casting, to Alumilite white resin to make colored opaque colors or to wood stabilizing resins for vibrant and constant colors.
www.exoticblanks.com www.exoticblanks.com

On using Alumilite dye with CJ:

Alumilite colors and Cactus Juice?

Any recommendation on how much color to add to cactus juice when stabilizing? say i want to make a quart of red how much red Alumilite dye would be a good starting point to to make a quart?
www.penturners.org
 
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