Rusty Nail Holes - how can I make them?

[Jay Pique]

I do a lot of work with reclaimed wood, and nice rusty nail holes are one of the tell-tale signs of previous use. Sometimes I get a great board that I'd like to use, but it just doesn't have any of these nice black nail holes. I'm wondering if I couldn't hammer in a couple of (degreased) nails and spray it with something to cause rapid rusting. Or maybe I could drill some holes and fill them with iron shavings? Maybe I'm going about it wrong - what if I just put a couple of drops of black dye into each hole - would it bleed into the surrounding wood sort of like a nail does over a period of years?

I'm probably going to try a few things, but I was wondering if any of you all had any suggestions. Thanks.

JP

[Teledude]

I recently read an article in one of the woodworking magazine.( I forget which one) They mentioned using shoe polish (SPARINGLY!!)as an antiquing agent. Might be worth experimenting with... Good luck.

[Teledude]

Article...

[whit3rd]

't hammer in a couple of

Some woods have the right chemistry (tannic acid) to form microscopic particles of hematite from iron-ions-in-solution. The chemistry is pretty well understood, because this was the basis of black ink manufacture for centuries.

Grind up some oak gall and steep in water to make 'gallic acid' or use '26% tannic acid solution' , or maybe even tartaric acid (my formulary mentions all three) to make the reagent that fixes the black color.

Drive some nails, and put a drop or two of the solution into each nailhole (after pulling the nails). Let it sit a day or two to soak in, and dry.

Then paint over the prepared spots with ferrous sulphate solution (0.9 part FeSO4, 0.4 part sulphuric acid, 83 parts water). Or, prepare a pickle with steel wool left in a jar overnight with white vinegar (you can use nails, if you want, but steel wool works fine for me) and after filtering this for crud, just paint that on. Don't try to store the pickle, it's unstable.

I haven't tried this, just pulled the formulas out of the book, except for direct application of the pickle to oak. That is an ebonizing recipe that should be familiar to many.

[mac davis]

Hard to say without seeing a picture, are the holes black? Rust colored, like brown?

Maybe just hammer a nail in, pull it out and touch to inside of the hole with a sliver with a drop of stain on it?

mac

Please remove splinters before emailing

[Lew Hodgett]

RE: Subject

Not sure about the holes, but my rusty nails contain 86 proof scotch and drambuie in equal portions over ice.

Lew

[lmlitwin]

Make a rusty water solution by putting rusty nails or steel wool in water. Put a drop of the rusty water into the nail hole with an eye dropper. Use tea (contains tannic acid) as a mordant after the rusty water dries. The tannic acid in the tea precipitates the rust in the water and fixes it in the wood. The color is silver grey to ebony black depending on the strength of the tea and how rusty the water is. I've used this method when making cretches (sp?) for hand made nativity sets to make the wood look old and weathered. It's an old time method for quickly weathering cedar shake.

[Bill T. Ray]

You might try BEHLEN Pore-O-Pac Paste Wood Grain Filler. It comes in black was well as other colors. It's intended to fill the pores in open pore woods such as mahogany and oak, but it might serve your purpose as well. It is a paste material intended for wood. It would take some experimenting but I think it would work. It would be much easier than mixing the I think it is sold by both Woodcraft and GarrettWade. It would certainly be easier and safer than mixing a solution containing sulfuric acid.

Bill T. Ray

[beecrofter]

steel wool and vinegar make the iron stain you want, perhaps use a dowel to apply it

[DLB]

Jay,

A few years back I was building a deck around my pool. Had most of my tools in a wheelbarrow. It started to rain so I threw everything into the wheelbarrow and rolled it in the shed for the night. Everything in the wheelbarrow had a few sprinkles of rain on them. The next day almost all exposed metal had rusted overnight. The culprit was an open container of chlorine tablets for the pool. You may want to experiment with something along those lines. Spritz the nails with water and put in my shed, just kidding, a closed container, then nail those suckers into the wood.

Dave