I'm currently making some drawer fronts with hardwood cherry. Unfortunately, the color of my different boards aren't matching too well. Some have a reddish tone and some others have a more brownish color. All the board are freshly jointed and planed. Obviously they don't come from the same batch.
Now the 100$ question, if I glue them together and apply some NGR brown stain, will the color become more even or it will just show the same kind of difference between the boards?
I recently made a cherry dining table, and encountered the same problem as you describe. After reading some finishing books, I decided to try to match the color by glazing. I started with a coat of gel varnish for the sealer coat. I used alternating coats of gel mahogany and cherry stain, until I had a good color match between boards. Gel stain is recommended for cherry, because of the potential splotching problem. I had other problems with my finish job, but color matching wasn't one of them. I think I may someday take the sander to it, and do it over, armed with the knowledge gained from my first attempt.
My experience is limited to two large cherry projects.
One was natural, where the plywood was much redder than the solids. Six months later they have both darkened and look much more alike. Sadly, I had some sapwood in an awkward place; it looked fine when new, but not so good now. Watch for that! (I am going to give it a year and see if I can't touch it up with some stain/varnish.)
The second was dyed and stained pretty dark. Everything came out pretty uniform regardless of what was underneath. (I tried to talk the customer into a cheaper wood, but he wanted cherry.)
So, I wouldn't worry too much about it; based on my limited experience.
patriarch wrote in news:Xns95519D5AA8D4Fgmadsencomcastnet@63.240.76.16:
Now that many of the smart-aleck answers have been offered (OK, there probably will be more)....
Have you tried a little sunlight? If you can make up drawer faces of similar colors, with as little or no sapwood as possible, so that the color is consistent within the drawer face, then giving them a suntan for a few hours can be a possible solution.
I rather like the natural variation of cherry, assuming you can balance what you have artisticly within the piece, so that face frames match, drawers are graduated from lighter to darker.
And cherry seems to be variably processed. Maybe that's an awkward means of stating it. I've recycled some cherry from some kitchen cabinets, and it seemed to have been steamed, or something. It didn't take oil quite the same as material I believe to have been air-dried. It was pretty, but more muted in character. Somewhat blotchy in certain areas.
And all these comments from someone whose first project in cherry was about
8 months ago. On the West Coast, it's an import, with the expected pricing.
I believe that FWW had, in the last year or so, an article on using dyes to blend cherry in pieces, such as highboys, etc., by someone does this really well. If your piece deserves that kind of attention, you'll at least need to do that level of research.
My projects are more Western Pennsylvania, and less Newport/Boston in their design heritage. Oils and wax, rather than french polish, etc.
On Fri, 27 Aug 2004 00:51:10 GMT, patriarch calmly ranted:
That was the kinder, gentler answer. Peace, brah.
Yeah, spackle and paint. Stainers DESERVE that.
There ya go. Strips of cloth/cardboard over the darker areas until the lighter bits catch up.
Ditto here. Wood is wood: tone varies. Hell, left arms are usually more tan than right, but do you see people staining their right arms? (Don't answer that. I really don't want to know any more than I already do about that subject: I saw an ad for a tanning airbrush last week with expensive human skin stain in 2 shades. Oy vay...)
Hmmm, maybe so.
Did you give it a nice, soaking bath in lacquer thinner before finishing it? Old kitchen wood (inside or not) is sure to have lots of baked-in food oils on it already.
Ebony and pink ivory are cheaper, huh?
Good dyes well applied are slightly less offensive to highly opinionated purists like me.
Good call. That finish is more to my style, too.
- Inside every older person is a younger person wondering WTF happened. ---
Larry Jaques wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:
I would have, but these had never made it to an actual kitchen. They were recycled from a stach of cabinet maker's leftovers that a scrounging buddy of mine got for next to or actually nothing. He just shows up with stuff, and says "You can make something from this, right?"
Another poster asked about the load capacity of his wood rack. I think I'm stress testing mine. It gets harder to get to wood I know is buried in there somewhere.
But I'm not complaining. Some folks have real problems.
OK, is that what that black-droplet-on-oak finish technique is called? Can anybody explain why I see it on cheap wood furniture so much? How did someone come up with that as a technique, and why?
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