Cherry wood test

[ridjrunr]

I had read somewhere about using ammonia and fuming cherry to darken it.
These two plugs where turned the same day from the same block of cherry.
The darker one was put in an empty coffee can that had about 1/4 cup of ammonia in it.
It was resting above the liquid on a plastic shot cup from cough syrup. I had the lid on the coffee can and let it set like this for 24 hrs.

The other one is just sanded bare cherry,nothing on it. After airing out the fumed one for a few days, I will put the same finish on both of these to compare. Pretty interesting so far.

[Roaddog]

I have not heard of that befor.Looks like it works very well.

[Kermit]

It speeds up what time and ultraviolet do for Cherry's color. What did you use for your ammonia?

[ridjrunr]

Kermit it's stuff from the grocerie store.
I think the article I had read referred to doing it on gunstocks and furniture in days past.

[Kermit]

Pretty benign stuff then. Some folks will go for industrial/agricultural stuff that can create some risks. "Fuming" wood has been done for a long time. Using what you did and on such a small scale is fairly safe.

[Captchee]

Dan
 to answer  the question you sent me , i had to read the  thread first  as i wasnt sure what your were talking about  

  so yes i have used cherry a couple of times . I  tried fuming a couple times  but  it seemed to me the result was that  the gas worked better in in the more open grain areas then in the tighter grain  in other words I found it rather blotchy . But then I to was using store bought ammonia.
I also tried the industrial. Well lets say commercial  grade ammonia as Kermit suggested as its still not the strongest ammonia you can buy.  Wont do that again LOL  but it did do a much better job . However the  areas ranged again from light to very dark  which when finished was almost black .
 I just don’t like the ammonia fumes.   but as you can see , it works .

 I  ended up going the Lye application route , then adding a little  stain after.  The thing to remember about cherry is that there are lots of different types of cherry .  
 Also keep in mind  the figure can range from none to Burl. But also remember that with smaller pieces like your using that figure isn’t really going to be real desirable unless your using a very tight burled wood . Where in larger , longer pieces the figure can be readily seen as your have more area
  I think the figure one gets depends on the cherry the plank was cut from . I also think that how  well a lye treatment works , depends on that  as well .
 cherry will also darken with age as well as change color with the finishing oils you chose . So keep that in minds as the brown you see now , may very well not be the finished color .
 Here is a build I did some years ago  from a Bing  cherry plank . Lye didnt give as dark and deep red as I wanted so I followed up with an alcohol based stain






also here is a link to a discussion we had some years ago over on the ALRF concerning lye on cherry . you will see more photos of the above rifle  as well as other folks guns . IE you will see how the color changes depending on the type of Cherry
. anyway i hope it helps you some .
http://americanlongrifles.org/forum/index.php?topic=9070.0

[ridjrunr]

Thank you Charlie,that gun is stunning! I believe that was the article I was thinking about.
This morning I took both plugs and put them back on the lathe and steel wooled them as the fumed one did develope whiskers.Then heated the plugs with hot air from my heat gun and the applied Johnson's paste wax while spinning. I feel the wood soaked some wax into the grain so I did this 4 times.This is the result.
I understand that sunlight and time does basically the same thing. Much like a custom recurve I own,made of bocote ,it is much darker today than when I had it built in 97.

[Kermit]

All that wonderful color you see on original Shaker cherry furniture earned its color the old fashioned way--time and ultraviolet light. The Shakers had no notion or need to add fake age to their furniture, so it went out the door pretty much as your unfumed example. All this time later we want the color of new-made pieces to immediately look a couple of centuries old.

I worked at the end of my woodworking carreer as a craftsman for a custom furniture designer who did a lot of Shaker and Greene & Greene style furniture, much of it in cherry. For a while we responded to customers who wanted instant age by applying oil (I don't recall the brand) to the cherry prior to spraying the catalyzed lacquer finish. We eventually gave that up, in favor of allowing the customer to experience the same ageing and color change that folks would have seen back in the day.

I think that is the way to do it. That said, I have a smoothrifle in cherry that was stained to mimic age. Funny that the maker needed to do that to the wood but did not apply the same ethic to the metal--brass bright and steel freshly browned. I like it anyway.

[ridjrunr]

Kermit, thank you for the input and I agree.
Just so happens these are a couple of pcs turned out of one of the scrap chunks you sent me a couple of yrs ago.The scraps from your garage(thanks again)
I wasn't so much wanting to age it or make it look old, as much as I wanted to darken it and it seems the wipe on stains get it too dark. Fuming gave me pretty much what I wanted,and the shade I like.
This will be going on a new powder horn and it will look new,not artificially aged.
The artificial aging you touched on is done a lot nowadays,to guns,horns, and other accoutrements. Sometimes tastefully done,but done too often IMO.

[Captchee]

as kermit suggests Dan , It will turn darker on its own with time and use . i dont know if i had that cherry plank when you were last at my shop .  if so you might be surprised that is now  very near the color which you  fumed  your plugs to . that’s came about not for sun light or a finish but just the raw   blanks setting in the stock .
  I often wonder however when such discussion come up , if we  seem to lose track of  they what and  why wood often achieved the colors  they did .
 What im getting at here is  for lack of a better description ,  let me call it environmental  conditions .
 Remember there was no electricity  either for heat or lighting .  As such you have wood smoke  candle  and oil soot . In  some cases depending on the shop  even coal oil soot  and in many cases tobacco smoke  .
 I don’t know if you recall the old black smith shop that was over in New Plymouth or for that mater if you had ever been in there  or if you realized that at one time it was also a  a wood working shop .  If not , its IMO note worthy  that the whole shop was  experimented with  the smell of  coal and  kerosene .
 I never really considered   how that effected the  products being turned out of a shop tell  I quite  smoking the first time  and realized just how much the colors of the wood in my home had changed . later when I  started smoking a pipe  I began to notice just how much the wood in my shop  had changed  in color and how quickly it  happened .
 One would also think because  we sand or cut back into new wood  when we do a project , that the newly exposed wood is effected . But the reality  I think is that  not only is the wood effected , but its also stimulated to some existent by  ourselves as we to have that same  contaminants  within our bodies, in the oils and acids  in our skin.  All of which can effect  what something looks like  especially if we are not careful in our finish work .
 Ie the different color one can sometimes see if an oil finish is applied by hand  without protective   gloves vs. one that been applied without and  contact “spry type finish “ or one that’s been applied and hand rubbed with  some type of applicator

 I also think  possibly we should not confuse artificial aging  with the stimulation of colors.
 While I cant speak to furniture , I can speak to  gun work . In that work we know that  stocks often times had  types of stains added to them  . In some cases  to in hence grain or color . In others  to cover it up as in the case with painted stocks .
 still other times the colors we see are from age  or the use of oils which quickly change  the woods color  when contaminants are introduced . Hence the patina we see on stock which BL or wax  has been used .