Suggestions on darkening the wood

[Suskmorrison]

Any suggestions on how I can darken wood blanks without any oil base products? I tried linseed oil and doesn't work well for me after applying ca glue.

 

[jttheclockman]

Well certain woods will darken with sunlight. You can always use stains weather waterbased or oils. Then there are the old woodworkers choices or at least some of them. Black tea has been used sort of as a stain on some woods. Vinegar and steel wool solution when dissolved will stain woods. Ammonia fuming can darken woods. Then the ever popular heat or flame can darken woods. Now actually doing any of these I suggest do some homework and google search methods. Controlling depth of darkening is another factor that would have to experiment to get the right look. Good luck.

 

[jrista]

What kind of darkening are you looking for? There are also ebonizing techniques. These work well on woods with tannins, which they usually rely on, and can make the wood quite dark for say oaks. On woods without much tannins, they can still darken the wood but won't really "ebonize" it by giving the wood a dark BLACK look. If you have a wood without a lot of tannins and just want a little darkening, this might be an option (before you finish with CA, which I would still recommend doing.)

There are also stains, and dyes...those might be too extreme, if all you are looking for is the kind of darkening you get when applying an oil finish. Might be another option though.

 

[carlmorrell]

I've had really good luck with dyes. I used the powdered water based "analine" dyes. I also had success with food coloring.

 

[SteveG]

Any suggestions on how I can darken wood blanks without any oil base products? I tried linseed oil and doesn't work well for me after applying ca glue.

It sounds as though you want to darken the wood AFTER you have applied a CA finish. The problem is that CA will form a shield that will not be penetrated by colorants. The logical approach would be to apply the coloring agent prior to the CA finish. That opens the options to a wide variety of stains. Many woods will react to sun light exposure by darkening a few shades . That process calls for care, since the heat of the sun might cause problems with wood splitting. Expose for short periods, rotating the blanks to get good all around exposure.