My regular (and favorite) supplier Arizona Silhouette is out of the green bottle stopper blanks (in both boxelder and Maple).
I'm looking for another supply. I did find:
Anyone know of another source?
So far ebay and other usual supects have come up dry.
Thanks
-- Nobody Special
When I make small Christmas stuff and want some color, I use Ritz (sp?) clothes dye (color fast, UV resistant) mixed with anhydrous alcohol. The anhydrous alcohol will actually suck out some of the moisture in the wood and replace it with the dye/alcohol mixture. I do this when I make little wooden Christmas light bulbs in red and green. Oddly enough, I have to go to a fabric/hobby store to get the exact color I am looking for, a kind of "pool table felt" green.
Cut your blank to shape, sand it, final sand it. Drop it in the dye mix. Leave it there overnight. Take it out and fiber pad/steel wool it, then if you have raised grain issues, drop it back in again overnight. Final sand and polish as usual. Make sure you give it a chance to dry properly between sandings and testing as you will have green everywhere if you don't.
Soft woods don't need overnight and will take in so much dye you will think it is baked in But a small, burly knot that doesn't take the dye really well surrounded by softer woods looks fantastic. Hard wood times vary, as does spalted materials. I experimented with times and dye mixes a lot, and now I just mix in a teaspoon of dye and put in pint of alcohol and let them swim in it.
You have latex gloves or tongs for this, right?
A word of warning: Mix your dye with distilled water if you are working with spalted wood as the alcohol will destroy the ink lines we all like so much.
You can do a million stoppers this way for pennies.
You could also use Behlen's green wood dye available at Amazon. I have no personal experience with it.
Robert
I like the suggestion on dying my own, but how deep does the dye penetrate?
I need pretty deep color because I actually glue up 2 parts for a stopper that looks like a Thistle. Here's the idea but in polyester:
So after gluing the green and purple parts together I'd need to clean it up some -- hence the need for good penetration of the dye.
Thanks
Not trying to be cagey, but it depends on the wood. A piece of soft maple will haul in the dye, a piece of burly oak will not. If you have some pieces that you are willing to try this on as an experiment, it would probably be worth your while. (C'mon... what turner doesn't have dozens of little nubs of this and that looking for a home?)
You know what I mean! ;^)
Put a piece of the wood you are thinking of making your stopper from in the dye and leave it overnight. Dry it out and cut a cross section with a saw. That will tell you how THAT particular piece will react. I have seen soft maple come out of a long soak of this stuff with about 1/8 penetration. On your woodturning, that means you would only have to get that little stopper within 1/4" of final shape. Not hard.
You won't ever get the same results from your house as they dye those pieces under something like 60,000 pounds of applied pressure, injecting them with some resin as well at the same time to help stabilize the blanks. I have read some ridiculous numbers on the fully stabilized blanks, so much so I wouldn't even post them.
The reason I said above to cut most of your shape before you dye was to make sure you minimized your penetration problems. You cut the raw wood into shape, sand it to finish, and then dip in your dye again if you have some irregularities in the finish.
Here's why I don't worry too much about Those dyes are pretty forgiving. If you sand off a little too much and it looks uneven, even after you assemble, you can touch up the dye job before finishing with a .10 artist's brush and a quick swipe with a rag The more burl and swirl the piece has the less chance anyone will ever have of detecting color differences.
What are you using for your final finish?
Another question, are you using plated chrome stoppers or Ruth Niles' stainless stoppers?
Robert
I sell black ash burl to a number of turners around the country, I know some of them use denatured alcohal to stabilize which displaces the moisture. you may be able to add dye to this cocktail, might be worth a try. ross
Yes, I do. Every time I try to walk across the shop without tripping.
I did go get a nice piece of maple burl yesterday and stuck a sliver into some TransTint (water soluble) dye yesterday for about 1.5hrs. Pretty much no penetration.
I'm thinking if I can get a vacuum pump I might try this:
I had been using shellac and wax, but was considering moving to BLO/cyanoacrylate.
I have some of the plated chrome stoppers, but my newest order was all stainless.
-- Jason
Think about it. The lower the density/SG of the wood, the more spaces versus places, since all wood's pretty much the same sugars. Means aspen and such are going to give you the best penetration versus time.
You can create a sort of mini vacuum by warming the wood and placing it into the dye. Lower pressure of the heated and expanded air will draw as it cools.
That's why I put in the earlier post to mix with alcohol. It is miscible with water, and will actually pull the surface moisture out of the wood to a small extent, penetrating more than water, bringing the dye along with it.
this:
Are you buying those from Arizona Silhouette?
As for finish, I line mine all up stuck on dowels and spray them with a couple of coats of lacquer from a rattle can. Then assemble. If my finish is where I want it I don't buff or anything else before packaging.
I haven't made that many, but I have been approached by someone that wants to see if I could make a lot of them for him to give as gifts in his business. As when I was making pens, it will probably work fine at first, but then so many will be doing it that the prices will drop to near nothing.
I get from $17.50 (chrome) and up to $25 (stainless) and everything in between for one of these. You? Anyone else?
Robert
RUBBISH! If it mixes, it merely dilutes. Water and alcohol molecules both find their way out to and are carried away in air. The more volatile alcohol finds its way out at a faster rate than the less-volatile water.
Alcohol mix dyes are used because they don't raise the grain as much as water mix. The reason the grain raises with water mix is that the water gets involved in hydrogen-bonding with the sugars, fattening them up. The wood boys refer to it as "bulking." Alcohols aren't as polar and prone.
And it carries no surface moisture with it? Should I surmise that when I wash my hands with anhydrous alcohol to clean them and they turn crusty and white that NO moisture was carried away? I doubt it. They seem pretty dry and without surface moisture to me.
In this instance, it works for me. YMMV. I know you well enough from this venue George that there is little room or tolerance in your world for contradiction to your own beliefs, but the alcohol testing I did with Behlen's Solar Lux did indeed penetrate significantly more on identical pieces of wood over the same period of time. >> I > I > I Alcohol mix dyes are used because they don't raise the grain as much as
My explanation may not have suited you in so far as how the dye penetration process works, but I believe yours to be oversimplified. I would think of you would try a simple penetration test yourself you would quite probably see a difference. After reading several well researched treatises by woodturners on alcohol drying and the use of alcohol as a carrier when dyeing or staining, there are two distinct camps with two different sets of supporting evidence.
Obviously we don't belong to the same one.
Robert
Damn, Bob.. Are you suggesting that George get penetrated???
mac
Please remove splinters before emailing
And add in the structure of the wood, porosity of the cellular walls, etc. Best to try a sample of your board and find out.
Nice idea.
Thanks
I didn't miss that detail, I just had the water based already mixed up. Now to repeat with alcohol and a longer soak.
this:
Yes. Know of a cheaper place? Although Bill's service is hard to beat.
I was selling the polyester for $20 and the wood ones for $25 this summer. But that was at Thistle (class of sailboat) Nationals- which is why they're shaped like Thistles.
I'm going with nailshooter here. Assuming you've got anhydrous alcohol, the water will want to equilize the concentrations inside the wood with that (0%) outside. Thus, water should exit the wood. Since nature abhors a vacuum, alcohol *should* work its way in to replace the water taking the dye with it.
The grain-raising (or lack thereof) may be the most common reason alcohol dyes are used, but there can be other useful properties.
-- Nobody Special
I got it now. When I looked at the pic you linked, I thought it looked pretty spiff, but when looking at them didn't get the actual reason for the thistle design.
For years, I have heard nothing but great stuff about AS in regards to their service and product. That says a lot to me. I have been purchasing from Craft Supplies, but probably won't anymore as they were only offering chrome stoppers. Whether true or not, the hue and cry is on to get rid of the chrome stoppers as the story goes that the chrome comes off. Mine haven't, nor have the ones I have gifted.
I was thinking about buying mine from Ruth Niles, another person whom there hasn't been an unkind word spoken. She used to frequent the forums and newsgroups more often, but I think she just got too busy. Seems to be a nice lady. Her site:
I am thinking of going another route with this, if you are interested, let me know here and we can contact each other.
I am surprised no one else chimed in with their stopper prices. Mac? Nothing? I can't believe you aren't selling tequila toppers (not stoppers!) down there south of the border.
Robert
Uh, the reason they're dry is because you've removed oils. Fortunately your body will produce more.
Take a quick look at how distillation works and you'll see what's happening. The azeotrope is ~95/5 % with ethanol. So with as little available water and as large a percentage of _anhydrous_ alcohol, it is what's evaporating. That azeotrope business is what makes methanol a good denaturant. ethanol/methanol azeotrope makes it near impossible to redistill.
You might have read before you responded. Didn't say it wouldn't penetrate farther. Just might, given that alcohol moves freely without being bound to the sugars like water. If the carrier has greater cohesion than adhesion, it should.
Go with this instead.
i've made some for my glass work, and worked with ruth on her steel tab design for glassworkers. i get between 25 and 40 for them, depending upon if they're 2 sided and how much glass i've added. my last batch of stoppers cost me about .90/each but the plating is incredibly thin, discolors, corrodes, and peels off, so you really do get your money's worth.
here's what i used:
I'm thinking I'll have to raise my prices by $5 for the SS, maybe that much for boxelder since that's no longer available. That'll give me a range from $20-35 and a better feel for what the market will handle.
My feeling is $25, maybe $30 is going to be the point of resistance. I also had a number of cigar pens at nationals ($45). Several lookers but only one buyer.
As for how long it takes to turn one, last night I realized I'd dropped my (old Delta) to its slowest speed (belt adjusted) for a bowl I was doing. Kept getting catches, and it was taking an hour to turn a stopper. Bumped it up 2 notches and things are much happier- and faster.
Today I walked past someone cleaning out a cube "Hey- got a motor controller for a 3/4Hp AC motor?" He replied "Sure, you know how to program it?" It's good to be an EE.
I answer to jason at
Reminds me of a industrial potato peeler at a french fry factory I once visited for work. They load up a 1000lbs of potatoes in a pressure vessel. Pressure it up to maybe 100 psi or so (can't remember the exact amount), hold it for 5-10 minutes, then release the pressure all at once. Blows the skin right off the potato.
Mitch
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